Tasting single cultivars without it being blended is a great way to improve your knowledge if matcha (and tea) but only useful if it comes from the same producer who has purposely created a series as such. Flavor and quality is affected by many other factors including cultivation techniques (shading, fertilization, etc), harvest timing and method, processing, refinement, and grinding technique; without a deliberate attempt to coordinate, you lose the ability to meaningfully compare cultivars. Luckily, master tea craftsman Natsumi Osada has put together five cultivars of matcha from Shizuoka.
