TeaHQ

Fuyun 7

One of the Fuyun series of Fujian cultivars, bred from crosses involving the Fuding large-white material and Yunnan large-leaf stock — which is what the name records, fu for Fujian and yun for Yunnan. The series was developed for vigour and for early, heavy production of downy buds, and it supplies a great deal of the material for jasmine-scented tea and for downy-bud white and green teas.

福雲7號Camellia sinensis var. sinensisFuyun 7ChinaAlso called Fuyun No. 7

Where it sits in the botany

Fuyun 7 is recorded under Camellia sinensis var. sinensis, the variety group one level above cultivar. It is associated with China, which is where it was selected or is most widely planted rather than the only place it grows.

Registration code: Fuyun 7. A breeding or registration code identifies the selection in an institutional register and is often the name a grower uses when the trade name is not.

Also transliterated as: fuyun 7, fu yun qi hao.

Where it came from

Bred in Fujian from crosses between local large-white material and Yunnan large-leaf stock, and released alongside Fuyun 6 and other numbers in the same series.

How firm this is: Inferred rather than taken from a primary breeding or registration record. The naming convention makes the parentage explicit; the release year and the precise cross were not verified against a primary source.

What the plant is like

Early, vigorous and very downy, giving plenty of silvery bud material. High yield relative to the older Fujian cultivars, and correspondingly less concentrated.

Why a grower plants it

Yield, hardiness, when it buds, what it resists and whether a machine can cut it. This is the half of a cultivar’s identity that decides what is actually in the ground, and it is usually left out of writing aimed at drinkers.

Bred to produce a great deal of downy bud material early and cheaply, which is precisely what a scenting factory needs. Jasmine tea is made by laying fresh jasmine blossom against finished tea repeatedly over several nights, and the base has to be neutral enough not to fight the flower, downy enough to hold the scent, and available in volume at a price that survives being processed five or six more times. A high-yielding early cross does that where an older, more concentrated cultivar would be wasted.

What it does in the cup

Reported as clean and mild with plenty of silvery bud and less concentration than the older Fujian cultivars — thinner in an unscented cup, and unproblematic in a scented one.

How much of this is really the cultivar?

In a jasmine tea the cultivar's contribution is almost entirely physical. Down holds volatile aroma and a plump bud looks like what the market expects, and beyond that the base is meant to stay out of the way. Judging a scented tea by its plant is a category error a surprising amount of speciality writing makes; the questions that decide a jasmine tea are how many scenting rounds it had, whether fresh flowers or an extract were used, and how good the base tea was before any of it started.

Cultivar, growing site and processing all shape a cup, and the cultivar is very often the smallest of the three. It is also the one that fits on a label, so almost every commercial incentive runs toward overstating it. This section is on every cultivar page that has been reviewed for it, including the ones where the honest answer is “less than you would think”.

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.

  • Green tea — Tea whose oxidation is halted early by heat, keeping the leaf green and the cup fresh, vegetal or marine in character.
  • White tea — The least handled category: withered and dried, with no fixation and no deliberate rolling.

Teas in the catalogue made from Fuyun 7

Other cultivars in Camellia sinensis var. sinensis

Guides covering this cultivar

  • How a tea cultivar is made, and why it takes decades — Every named plant in the cultivar catalogue is the output of a process that runs for twenty to forty years, mostly at public expense, and ends with a plant that growers may or may not adopt. Knowing the process explains why cultivars have the traits they do.

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.

How TeaHQ handles sources