Yabukita

Yabukita can be drunk straight warm or cold, or mixed into a trendy latte for an afternoon pick-me-up or as a morning energizer. We classify Yabukita cultivar as a Daily Matcha because it is at an affordable price point with a good balance of astringency and hints of umami. This is the owner, Joyce’s favorite for daily drinking and it is the house matcha used for many signature lattes at our tea lounge in Albany, NY.

The Yabukita cultivar comes to us from Shizuoka, another illustrious, historical, and legendary area for Japanese tea along with Uji and other astounding regions. Yabukita was developed as a cultivar in 1908 by Hikosaburo Sugiyama just north of a languid bamboo grove. In fact, this is where the name comes from with “yabu” meaning “bamboo” and “kita” meaning “north”. So "Yabukita" means "north of the bamboo grove"!

From the 1950s onward, Yabukita became Japan’s most popular tea cultivar, with 75% of Japan’s tea fields and 90% of Shizuoka’s tea fields. Yabukita is often made into sencha, which is a popular style of tea for everyday consumption and use. Yabukita is frost and drought resistant. It has a high yield and can adapt to different soil and climate types, which all further contribute to this cultivar being such a monolith of the tea world in Japan.