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Tea cultivars - why they decide the flavour

All the tea of the world comes from one plant, Camellia sinensis, but that does not explain why one green tea smells of grass, another of flowers, and yet another of nut. Part of the answer lies in processing, but a huge role is played by something hardly anyone thinks about over a cup: the cultivar. It is a cultivated, carefully selected variety of the tea bush, most often propagated from cuttings to keep exactly the same traits. It is the cultivar, even before processing, that sets the potential of the leaf: its composition, its aroma and what tea it suits. Some famous teas are downright inseparable from a particular cultivar. Here is a guide to tea cultivars: what they are, how they differ from botanical varieties and why they decide the flavour.

What a cultivar is

The word cultivar is short for cultivated variety. It is a plant selected by humans for particular traits: flavour, aroma, productivity, resistance or harvest time. Unlike wild plants, a cultivar is uniform and repeatable. In tea, cultivars are most often propagated vegetatively, from cuttings or by rooting shoots, rather than from seed. Thanks to this, every new bush is a genetic copy of the parent and keeps exactly the same flavour traits. Were tea propagated from seed, the offspring would split apart and lose its uniformity. A cultivar is therefore a carefully fixed clone of known, predictable character, the foundation of growing good tea.

Cultivar versus botanical variety

It is easy to confuse a cultivar with a botanical variety, and these are two different levels. Camellia sinensis has two main botanical varieties: the small-leaved sinensis and the large-leaved assamica. That is a natural division, at the level of the plant itself. Cultivars, in turn, are the hundreds of cultivated variants bred within those varieties, tuned to particular regions and tea styles. In other words, a botanical variety is a broad frame, and a cultivar is a particular, named clone within it. Yabukita or Tieguanyin are cultivars, not botanical varieties. Understanding this difference orders the whole subject. We cover the botanical varieties themselves more in Camellia sinensis, sinensis versus assamica. The cultivar is the level closer to the cup, because it directly shapes the flavour.

Why the cultivar decides the flavour

Different cultivars give different colour and flavour of tea, and that even before processing begins. It follows from differences in the chemical composition of the leaf: the content of catechins responsible for astringency, caffeine, the amino acids that give sweetness and umami, and the aromatic compounds. One cultivar may be rich in substances giving a floral aroma, another in those building a strong, substantial body. The choice of cultivar is therefore the choice of a starting point: the same processing will give a different result on a different leaf. That is why particular cultivars have attached themselves permanently to particular styles and regions of tea. The grower, in choosing a cultivar, decides in advance what tea can be made from it. It is a decision from years back, because the bush grows for decades.

Yabukita - the Japanese standard

The best example of the power of a cultivar is the Japanese Yabukita. It was selected in Shizuoka in 1908 and officially registered in 1953. Today it is by far the most popular tea cultivar in Japan, accounting for about seventy-five percent of the country crop. Yabukita gives a reliably balanced flavour: refreshing, of moderate bitterness and a grassy aroma that most people associate precisely with Japanese green tea. Its success comes from a combination of good flavour, productivity and resistance. What the world takes for the typical profile of Japanese green is, to a large degree, the profile of one cultivar. Yabukita shows how a single well-chosen clone can dominate a whole country and shape our idea of what tea tastes like.

Tieguanyin - the oolong cultivar

In China a great example is Tieguanyin, a cultivar from the Anxi region, giving the famous oolong of the same name. The leaves of this cultivar are rolled into tight balls, and the tea is judged by its characteristic floral, milky aroma and a smooth, slightly astringent aftertaste in the throat, called yun. It is a cultivar tuned over centuries to one style of tea, in which its traits reveal themselves most fully. Tieguanyin shows that in the world of oolongs the cultivar can be downright identical with the name of the tea: the same name means both the variety of the bush and the finished drink. This tight link of cultivar to style is typical of high-class Chinese teas, where a particular clone, region and method of processing form an inseparable whole.

Rou Gui and Shui Xian - the cultivars of the rock

An even more interesting example is the famous rock oolongs from the Wuyi Mountains, like Da Hong Pao. Modern Da Hong Pao is most often a blend of two cultivars: Rou Gui and Shui Xian. Each brings something different. Rou Gui gives a spicy, cinnamon aroma and a bold, sharp character. Shui Xian adds a thick, mossy, creamy body. Together they build the full, complex profile of the tea, in which one seeks the mineral aftertaste called yan yun, the rhyme of the rock. It is an excellent example of how blending cultivars allows flavour to be composed, just as a brewer blends malts or a winemaker grapes. Da Hong Pao shows that a cultivar is not only the choice of one plant, but also a tool for building complexity through deliberate blending.

A table of selected cultivars

Let us gather a few well-known cultivars in one place:

The table shows how a particular cultivar is bound to a particular style and region of tea. These are not random names, but fixed clones of known character.

Cultivar, region and processing

A cultivar does not act in a vacuum. The same clone planted in a different place will give a slightly different tea, because flavour is also shaped by terroir: soil, altitude, climate. To this is added processing, which from the same leaf can make green, oolong or black. The cultivar therefore sets the potential, and the region and processing decide how much of that potential is drawn out. The best teas are born where all three things play together: a well-chosen cultivar, a favourable region and masterful processing. That is why the name of a cultivar alone does not guarantee quality, but it is an important clue. Understanding this interdependence is a higher level of understanding tea, at which one stops thinking of it as a uniform drink.

What it means for the drinker

For a tea lover, the cultivar is the key to a deeper understanding of what is in the cup. More and more often roasters and shops give the name of the cultivar, especially with Japanese greens and Chinese oolongs. It is worth paying attention to it and remembering which cultivars we like best. Over time you will start to recognise that a grassy, balanced profile is often Yabukita, and a floral, milky oolong is Tieguanyin. This lets you choose deliberately and hit your taste more accurately. We cover the kinds of tea themselves more in types of tea. The cultivar is the layer that separates a beginner from someone who truly understands where the flavour of tea comes from.

The essentials in brief

Let us gather it up. A cultivar is a cultivated, selected variety of the tea bush, propagated vegetatively from cuttings to keep exactly the same traits. It is a level narrower than the botanical variety sinensis or assamica, and it is the one that, even before processing, sets the potential of the leaf: its composition, aroma and purpose. The Japanese Yabukita gives about seventy-five percent of the country tea and shapes our idea of green. The Chinese Tieguanyin is at once a cultivar and the name of an oolong, and Da Hong Pao blends the cultivars Rou Gui and Shui Xian. The cultivar plays together with region and processing. Now you know why the choice of variety decides the flavour even before the leaf reaches processing.

Note every tea in GustoNote - the kind, the region and, if you know it, the cultivar. Over time you will start to link particular flavour profiles to particular varieties of the bush, and understand more deeply where the diversity of the tea world comes from.