Abstract
The Murakami region in Niigata is Japan‘s northernmost commercial tea-growing area although it snows there in winter. To clarify the characteristics and the quality of Murakami green tea, tea leaves produced in Murakami were analyzed on the chemical composition and color values. The sensory evaluation of Murakami and Shizuoka green tea was also conducted using water of different quality. The cluster analysis of its data resulted in a dendrogram, which showed two groups of tea samples produced in two different areas. The discriminate analysis was conducted to the same data, and the hypothesis that tea can be classified by place of production was not confirmed, whereas it was confirmed as to some type of water. The results of sensory evaluation for green tea produced in Murakami varied depending on the quality of the water used to make the tea. However, within the range of water quality used in this study, water quality did not influence taste so as to discriminate between Murakami tea and Shizuoka tea in sensory evaluation.
