New Green Tea Cultivars: Why They Rarely Become Famous

China has released dozens of new green tea cultivars since the 1970s, and a few are now widely planted. Longjing 43, released in 1987, is the most successful. Zhongcha 108 followed in the 2010s. Anji Baicha is a mutant rather than a bred cultivar and became a category of its own. What these have in common is that they are cultivars, not place names, and the market has been slow to treat them as such.

The distinction matters because a tea can be named after a cultivar or after a place, and the two systems are confused constantly. Longjing 43 grown in Sichuan is Longjing 43 and is not Longjing.

The ones that worked

Longjing 43 was selected from the Longjing population for earliness and uniformity. It flushes about a week earlier than the population cultivar, which matters because a week at the start of April is the difference between a Mingqian tea and a post-Mingqian one.

That single trait explains its spread. A producer who can pick earlier can sell at a higher price, and the cultivar pays for itself in one season.

Zhongcha 108 goes further in the same direction, flushing earlier still and yielding more. It is planted for the same commercial reason.

Anji Baicha is different. It is a mutant found in the 1980s whose leaves turn white in cold spring weather because chlorophyll production stalls, and the leaf accumulates amino acids instead. The result is a very sweet, very pale tea, and it became a premium product on the basis of that accident.

Why new cultivars rarely become famous names

A famous tea name is a place. Longjing is a village, Biluochun is a hillside, Huangshan is a mountain. A cultivar name is a plant, and the market buys places rather than plants.

The second reason is that a place name carries a story. A village has a history, a poem and a set of photographs. A cultivar has a release date and a yield figure.

The third is that a cultivar is reproducible and a place is not. Longjing 43 can be planted anywhere with a suitable climate, which makes it cheap and common, which makes it hard to sell at a premium.

So the successful cultivars are sold as improvements to an existing place-name tea rather than as names in their own right. A producer sells Longjing 43 as Longjing, and the cultivar is a detail rather than the brand.

What a buyer should do with this

• A cultivar name tells you earliness, yield and sometimes flavour, not origin.
• Longjing 43 is a plant, not a place, and it can be grown anywhere.
• Anji Baicha is a cultivar that became a category.
• Ask which cultivar when the price is high, because it explains the picking date.
• Do not pay a place-name premium for a cultivar grown elsewhere.
• Judge the cup, since the cultivar is only one input.

A drinker who knows the cultivar can predict the picking date and, to a degree, the flavour. Longjing 43 is early, uniform and mild. The old population cultivar is later, less uniform and more aromatic.

That comparison is worth making once. A Longjing 43 and a population Longjing from the same year taste different, and the difference is the plant rather than the place.

The commercial reality is that most of the Longjing sold is Longjing 43, because it is what producers plant. A drinker who wants the older flavour should ask for the population cultivar and expect to pay more and to receive a less even leaf.

What an early cultivar costs in flavour

Earliness is bought at a price. A cultivar that flushes a week earlier in colder weather grows faster and accumulates less of the compounds that give aroma, so an early cultivar is usually milder and less aromatic than the population it replaced.

That is a general pattern in plant breeding and it applies to tea. Yield and earliness are easy to select for; aroma is not, because it is a complex trait involving many compounds.

The result is that the most planted cultivars are the most productive and not the most interesting. A drinker who wants aroma should look for the older population cultivars and expect to pay more for a less even leaf.

Anji Baicha is the exception, because the mutation that makes it valuable also raises the amino acid content. It is early, productive and distinctive, which is why it became a premium product rather than a commodity one.

• Early flushing costs aroma, because the leaf grows faster.
• Yield and earliness are easy to breed for, aroma is not.
• The most planted cultivars are the most productive, not the best.
• Older population cultivars are more aromatic and less even.
• Anji Baicha is the exception, since the mutation raises amino acids.
• Ask for the population cultivar if you want the older flavour.

What the release process involves

A new cultivar is selected from a population, propagated by cutting, tested across several sites for yield and quality, and then registered with a provincial or national body. The process takes ten to twenty years from the first selection.

The trials measure yield, flush timing, disease resistance and sensory quality. Quality is the hardest to measure and the most often described in general terms, which is why a released cultivar can be productive and unremarkable.

Once registered, a cultivar spreads through nurseries and is planted by producers who want its traits. That is how Longjing 43 became the dominant plant in the Longjing area within a generation.

The result is that a famous tea’s flavour can change without its name changing. A Longjing from 2020 is made from different plants than a Longjing from 1970, and the name covers both.

• Selection, propagation and multi-site trials take ten to twenty years.
• Yield, flush timing and disease resistance are easy to measure.
• Sensory quality is the hardest trait and the least precise.
• A released cultivar spreads through nurseries quickly.
• Longjing 43 became dominant within a generation.
• A tea’s flavour can change while its name stays the same.

A final note on what the cultivar does to the price. A named cultivar does not justify a premium on its own, because it can be grown anywhere and it is often cheaper to produce.

What justifies a premium is the picking date the cultivar enables. An early cultivar picked before Qingming is worth more than a later one picked after, and that is the claim worth paying for.

A drinker who wants the older flavour should ask for the population cultivar and accept a less even leaf. That is the trade, and it is one worth making once to know the difference.

The commercial reality is that most of what is sold is the modern plant. That is not a defect and it is a reason to judge the cup rather than the name on the tin.

What to look for on a cultivar label

A tin that names a cultivar is telling you about the plant and not about the place. Longjing 43, Zhongcha 108 and Baiye 1 are all plant names, and each predicts a different picking date and a slightly different flavour.

That is useful information and it is not a quality claim. A cultivar can be grown well or badly, and a well-made tea from a common cultivar beats a careless one from a rare plant.

A drinker should read the cultivar as one input among several, alongside the garden, the picking date and the producer, and should judge the cup rather than the label.

A final note on the difference between a cultivar and a brand. A brand is a promise about consistency and a cultivar is a fact about a plant, and the two are often sold together without being distinguished.

A buyer who knows which is which can tell what is being claimed and what is merely implied.

That is the whole of the cultivar question, and it comes down to one sentence: a plant name predicts a picking date, and a place name sells a story.

Frequently asked questions