I have been rather quiet about my Sayama teas recently because of all the other teas that I’ve been getting, but I recently cracked open the Yutakamidori cultivar’s sencha and black tea versions and thought it might be fun to do a comparison! I’ve been doing reviews of the cultivars for a bit so I think it would be more fun to do comparisons for the cultivars where I have different versions.

Sencha Tasting Notes

This sencha didn’t have much umami to it, instead I got a floral note. I found this pretty sweet for a sencha and looking back on what I learnt about the cultivar the previous time, I wonder if this has been deeped-steamed. Perhaps I should have observed the sencha leaves more closely. Overall I found this to be a very easy to drink sencha that’s on the sweet and floral side.

Black Tea Tasting Notes

The black tea was quite sweet with a vegetal/woody taste. This actually fits somewhat with what I tasted last year, which is a relief (it’s never fun to drink something and wonder if your tastebuds are suddenly failing you). I did wish this had a bit of a malty note because this time round, it did feel like a green tea that was made into a black tea.

Overall Thoughts

Drinking both these teas in one day (though not at the same time) made me realise that I like the green tea version more. The black tea version isn’t bad but it isn’t rich/malty enough for me (this is probably due to the type of black teas I’ve been drinking).

I probably have a few more senchas & black teas made from the same cultivar so let me try a few more and see if I’ll consistently prefer the sencha or if it’s really going to be random.