Samidori Matcha - First Harvest

Samidori (さみどり) is one of Uji’s most cherished traditional matcha cultivars. Its name, meaning “early green”, reflects both its harvest timing and its striking leaf color - a tribute to the first flush of spring.Unlike newer cultivars developed for mass farming or machine processing, Samidori has long been grown and hand-picked in Kyoto’s tea fields, particularly in Uji, where generations of artisans have nurtured it using time-honored methods. Samidori is believed to be one of the local cultivars selected and propagated by Kyoto farmers for its exceptional quality in tencha (the leaf used for matcha).Today, it is still considered a “Kyoto-native” cultivar, with much of the highest-grade Samidori matcha coming directly from the Uji region, where it thrives in the shaded hills and misty climate that define Japan’s matcha heartland.