Benihomare
Japan’s first cultivar registered specifically for black tea, selected from assamica-derived material as part of the interwar effort to build a Japanese export black-tea industry that could compete with India and Ceylon. That industry never established itself and the plantings were largely abandoned after import liberalisation, but Benihomare survived to become a parent of later Japanese black-tea cultivars and is now grown again by the small wakoucha revival.
Where it sits in the botany
Benihomare is recorded under Camellia sinensis var. assamica, the variety group one level above cultivar. It is associated with Japan, which is where it was selected or is most widely planted rather than the only place it grows.
Also transliterated as: benihomare, beni homare.
Where it came from
Selected from assamica-derived stock for black-tea manufacture and registered in the first half of the twentieth century, as part of a state effort to develop a Japanese black-tea export trade.
How firm this is: Inferred rather than taken from a primary breeding or registration record. The programme and its failure are well documented in general reference material; the registration year was not verified against a primary source.
What the plant is like
Large-leaf, cold-tender assamica-derived material that oxidises readily — the reverse of what the rest of the Japanese cultivar stock is selected for.
What it is usually made into
The categories this cultivar is typically processed into. It is a statement about common practice, not a limit — processing decides the category, and a cultivar can be taken down more than one route.
- Black tea — Tea taken deliberately through full enzymatic oxidation, giving the dark leaf, amber-to-red liquor and malty or brisk character most Western drinkers think of as simply 'tea'.
Teas in the catalogue made from Benihomare
Other cultivars in Camellia sinensis var. assamica
- Assam indigenous jat
- Benifuji
- Benihikari
- Benikaori
- Betjan
- Camellia sinensis var. assamica
- East African seedling tea
- Fengqing Da Ye
- GMB 7
- Kiara 8
- Lingyun Baihao
- Manipuri jat
- Menghai Da Ye
- Mengku Da Ye
- Miang landrace
- PH1
- Shan Tuyết
- Sri Lankan seedling tea
- Tai Cha No. 8
- TRFK 301/4
- TRFK 303/577
- TRFK 306/1
- TRFK 31/8
- TRFK 6/8
- TV1
- TV23
- TV25
- Yinghong No. 9
- Yunkang 10
- Yunkang 14
- Yunnan Da Ye Zhong
- Zi Juan
- Zi Ya
Sources
- TeaHQ editorial synthesis — TeaHQ
This page is TeaHQ’s own synthesis throughout. No breeding register or institutional record stands behind the account above, which is why the origin note carries its confidence in the open rather than reading as a citation.
Written comparisons
Where TeaHQ has set this cultivar against something it is routinely confused with, and argued the differences out in full.
- Benihomare vs Benifuuki — The two cultivars behind Japanese black tea, separated by decades of breeding intent. Benihomare is assamica-derived material selected when Japan was trying to compete in the export black-tea trade; Benifuuki is a later hybrid that is now grown for reasons largely unconnected to how its black tea tastes.