Sunrouge
A Japanese cultivar whose young leaves carry anthocyanin pigmentation, so the leaf is reddish-purple rather than green and the infusion turns from purplish to pink when acidified with lemon. It is the Japanese counterpart of Kenya’s TRFK 306/1 and of Yunnan’s Zi Juan: three unrelated breeding programmes that independently produced purple tea plants, in each case as a pigment trait in the leaf rather than as a processing style. This record makes no claim about what the pigment does for anyone.
Where it sits in the botany
Sunrouge is recorded under Hybrid, 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: sunrouge, san ruju.
Where it came from
Bred in Japan’s national research system from material including non-Japanese parentage, and released as an anthocyanin-rich cultivar.
How firm this is: Inferred rather than taken from a primary breeding or registration record. The anthocyanin trait is the settled part. The parentage and release year were not verified against a primary source.
What the plant is like
Reddish young shoots, a distinctly astringent and unusual cup, and a colour change with acid that has made it popular for cold-brewed and visually presented drinks. Grown in very small quantity.
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.
A niche planting on a very small area, grown for the pigment trait and for a specific market rather than for field performance. Nothing about its yield or hardiness recommends it over the Japanese cultivars around it, and it is handled largely by producers making a visually distinctive bottled or cold-brewed product where the colour is the point. It has to be picked and fixed as green tea to retain the pigment.
What it does in the cup
Distinctly astringent by Japanese green-tea standards with a firm, slightly tannic edge and a reddish-purple liquor that turns pink on acidifying. It is an unusual cup rather than a comfortable one, and it is rarely sold on flavour.
How much of this is really the cultivar?
Sunrouge is the third member of the purple trio alongside Kenya's TRFK 306/1 and Yunnan's Zi Juan, and the same reading applies to all three: the pigmentation is a real, bred cultivar trait; the flavour is not much of one. What is being sold is a colour and, in almost every case, the health framing that has attached to anthocyanins — and that framing is exactly what TeaHQ does not state. The compositional fact is that the leaf carries anthocyanins; the pink-on-lemon colour change follows from the pigment's chemistry rather than from anything about tea. What is in the glass beyond that is decided by how the leaf was fixed and brewed, as with any other green tea.
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.
Other cultivars in Hybrid
Guides covering this cultivar
- Albino, yellow and purple: the tea plants with a pigment fault — A handful of tea cultivars produce leaves that are not green — white, yellow, or purple. In every case the colour is a property of the plant rather than of the processing, and in every case the name of the resulting tea has been confused with a processing category.
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.