Izumi Tea Cultivar: Japan's Export Green Tea Reborn as Black Tea

Izumi (いずみ) is a Japanese tea cultivar registered in April 1960 as Cha Norin No. 24. It grew from the seed of Benihomare, a black tea plant, yet it was registered as a green tea: a pan-fired tea for export to North Africa, where Japan was trying to win buyers away from Chinese tea. Its own breeders praised it for export and, in the same paper, wrote that its flavour tended to be too strong for kamairicha sold at home. When the export trade faded, Izumi had nowhere to go. Decades later a few growers brought it back, and this time they made it into black tea.

That loop is why I wanted to write about it. Most of the Japanese tea cultivars you meet today were bred for the Japanese cup. Izumi was bred for someone else's, and the 1961 paper that announced it still exists, with the breeders' own measurements. So this piece leans on that paper more than on anything written since.

Key Takeaways

• Izumi (いずみ) was registered as Cha Norin No. 24 in April 1960, under the breeding line name At-5371.
• It is a natural seedling of Benihomare (Cha Norin No. 1), a black tea cultivar. Its pollen parent is unknown.
• It was registered for pan-fired tamaryokucha and bred for the North African export market, where exporters judged its aroma equal to Chinese "special" grade.
• From 1956 to 1959 it yielded 979 kg of fresh leaf per 10 a, an index of 210 against the kamairicha standard Takachiho, and could be plucked six times a year.
• Its breeders judged its flavour too strong for domestic kamairicha. It nearly vanished. A grower in Koga, Ibaraki began reviving it in 1992 and has made black tea from it since 2012.

What is the Izumi tea cultivar?

Izumi is a Japanese green tea cultivar bred in Kyushu for pan-fired tea (kamairicha). It was registered in 1960 as Cha Norin No. 24. The official Cha Norin registry gives it a single row. That row lists the breeding line At5371 and the parentage "a seedling of Benihomare" (べにほまれの実生). The breeder is the Kyushu Agricultural Experiment Station, and the registered use is "pan-fired tamaryokucha" (釜炒り製玉緑茶) (Cha Norin registered cultivar list, checked 2026-09-14).

The paper that introduced it carries the same name in its title, 「かまいり茶用新登録品種「いずみ」について」, "A Newly Registered Tea Variety 'Izumi' for Kamairitya" (Sanai and Amma, Tea Research Journal No. 17, 1961). An independent English cultivar table agrees on the essentials: "Izumi, Beni-homare seed, 1960, Kyûshû research center," listed among the registered kamairi-cha cultivars (Japanese Tea Sommelier, "The Japanese tea cultivars", 22 August 2022).

Izumi at a glance

Attribute	Detail
Japanese name	いずみ (Izumi)
Registration	Cha Norin No. 24 (茶農林24号), April 1960
Breeding line name	At-5371 (assigned 1953)
Parentage	Natural seedling of Benihomare. Pollen parent unknown
Where the seed was sown	Fukuoka Prefectural Agricultural Experiment Station, Chikugo Branch, 1933
Registered by	Kyushu Agricultural Experiment Station (national)
Registered use	Pan-fired tamaryokucha (kamairicha)
Plucking season	Medium. First flush on 30 April at the station, in a range of 22 April to 8 May
Yield (1956 to 1959)	979 kg fresh leaf per 10 a, index 210 against Takachiho
Known weakness	Tends to be susceptible to net blister blight (網餅病), a fungal leaf blight
Made into today	Black tea, and some oolong, from a few growers

A note on the name. The 1961 paper does not say where "Izumi" comes from, and I will not guess at a translation. One Japanese tea writer traces it to 和泉, a district of Chikugo City in Fukuoka, which that writer calls its birthplace (やっとん, note.com, 2021). That fits the paper's Chikugo origin, but it is one writer's account, so read it as a lead rather than a fact.

The name also collides with real places in tea country. 出水 (Izumi) is a city in Kagoshima, one of Japan's biggest tea prefectures. A tea labelled "Izumi" may simply be named after a place, so look for the hiragana いずみ or a Benihomare parentage before assuming it is this cultivar.

Why Izumi was bred for North Africa

Izumi exists because Japan wanted a bigger share of the North African green tea trade. The introduction to the 1961 paper sets out the logic: North Africa was then the largest market for green tea, Japanese green tea was competing there with Chinese tea, and pan-fired tea suited that market better than steamed tea did (Sanai and Amma, 1961). Kamairicha was a Kyushu speciality, and when the paper was published in 1961 it put that production at 3,700 tonnes.

If you mainly know steamed Japanese green teas like sencha, this is a different branch of the family. Pan-firing stops the leaf's oxidation in a hot pan instead of with steam, and it tends to give a toastier, more Chinese-style aroma. That was the point. The breeders were not trying to please a Tokyo tea room. They were trying to match a cup brewed a long way from Japan.

The paper's export reviews show exactly who they had in mind. Reviewers from the Japan Tea Exporters' Association tasted Izumi from 1956 to 1959. For the 1956 first flush they wrote that its aroma was unusually intense, its taste had body, and its flavour did not disappear even when sugar was added, making it comparable to Chinese tea (Sanai and Amma, 1961, Table 6). The sugar test only makes sense for a market that drinks green tea sweetened.

Two more lines in that table sharpen the picture. A processed 1957 second-flush sample was judged to be without fault as a tea "for North Africa and the Soviet Union" (北ア、ソ連向き). And in 1959 the exporters tasted a first-flush sample against a superior tea shipped to the Oran region, in Algeria, and concluded that its aroma was the same as Chinese "special" grade and its taste was better than Chinese tea. That is about as specific as a breeding target gets.

For the wider story of how much tea Japan once sold abroad and how that changed, see our look at Japan's tea exports in 1932 versus 2025.

From a black tea seedling to a green tea cultivar

Izumi's mother plant was bred for black tea. Benihomare is Cha Norin No. 1, registered in 1953 at Kanaya as a black tea cultivar grown from seed introduced from India (Cha Norin registry). It was registered the same year as Yabukita, which became Cha Norin No. 6 (My Japanese Green Tea, Benihomare). The 1961 paper describes Benihomare as a Tada-line Indian hybrid, an Indian type that carries some Chinese-type traits.

The path from that black tea plant to a green tea cultivar ran through several institutions, and the 1961 paper sets it out step by step:

1. 1933: Benihomare seed was sown at the Fukuoka Prefectural Agricultural Experiment Station, Chikugo Branch, with black tea as the goal. Izumi was selected from those naturally crossed seedlings.
2. 1950: When research bodies were reorganised, the Ministry of Agriculture's Kyushu Agricultural Experiment Station took the line over.
3. 1952: The station set up a breeding laboratory for kamairicha.
4. 1953: The selection received the line number At-5371 and went into testing as an export kamairicha.
5. April 1960: It was registered as Cha Norin No. 24.

Why look for a pan-fired green tea among the children of a black tea plant? The paper gives a reason rooted in the leaf itself. The kamairicha lab had found that leaves with a thick mesophyll (the soft inner tissue of the leaf) and densely packed cells made good pan-fired tea, and that plants like that were common among the offspring of Chinese, Taiwanese, and South China crossed with Assam types. So the breeders concentrated on selecting seedlings rather than making new crosses (Sanai and Amma, 1961).

Accounts of the early history do not all line up. The reviving grower's English page describes the breeding site as a Yame branch of the national station (About Izumi, retrieved 2026-09-14). The 1961 paper names the prefectural station's Chikugo Branch and the 1950 handover to the national Kyushu station. Where they differ, I follow the paper, since it was written by the breeders. If you want to know the region, our guide to Yame and Fukuoka tea covers the prefecture Izumi was selected in.

What Izumi's 1961 registration paper measured

The breeders measured Izumi against two cultivars: its mother Benihomare, and Takachiho (Cha Norin No. 11), which the paper uses as the kamairicha standard. The short version is that Izumi grew vigorously, came in well ahead of its mother, and kept growing all summer.

The plant. Compared with Benihomare, Izumi was more vigorous and more cold hardy, with an upright habit and very strong growth. Its leaves were elliptic and bright green, with a slightly wrinkled surface. It regrew strongly after plucking, and cuttings rooted very easily (Sanai and Amma, 1961).

Izumi against Takachiho and Benihomare, from Sanai and Amma (1961), Tables 2 to 5

Measure	Izumi	Takachiho	Benihomare
First flush plucking date	30 April	30 April	11 May
Mature leaf, length x width	8.64 x 3.50 cm	8.46 x 3.63 cm	9.40 x 4.34 cm
Leaf thickness	0.31 mm	0.30 mm	0.37 mm
Mean fresh leaf yield, 1956 to 1959 (kg per 10 a)	979.0	466.3	445.9
Yield index (Takachiho = 100)	210	100	95
Quality score, first flush, three-year mean	90.6	84.8	Not scored

The season. Izumi's first flush came on 30 April, in a range of 22 April to 8 May. That put it level with Takachiho, and 11 days earlier than Benihomare on average (a gap of 7 to 20 days across the observations). No source I found compares its budding date with Yabukita, so I will not give one.

The yield. This is the number that stands out. Over four years, on bushes 11 to 14 years old, Izumi averaged 979 kg of fresh leaf per 10 a (1,000 square metres), more than twice Takachiho's 466 kg. The paper rounds it to "about 1,000 kg per 10 are." Its growth was so strong that it could be plucked six times a year, where Takachiho managed three.

The yield was also spread differently through the year. According to the paper's Figure 1, only about 30 percent of Izumi's annual leaf came from the first flush, and the rest came in summer. Benihomare was the opposite, with more than half of its yield in the first flush. The text notes the contrast directly: Izumi's summer yield is high, "remarkably different" from Benihomare, which yields mainly in the first flush.

The weakness. Izumi tended to be susceptible to net blister blight (網餅病), a fungal leaf blight, so it needed spraying. On the other hand, the stem canker that often hit Benihomare was rarely seen on it (Sanai and Amma, 1961). My Japanese Green Tea puts it more bluntly, calling Izumi "very weak against the net blister blight" (My Japanese Green Tea, Izumi, retrieved 2026-09-14).

The cup. As a kamairicha, the paper describes Izumi as tightly shaped, green with a slightly dark cast but glossy, with a pale gold liquor, a distinctive and intense aroma, and a rich body. Spring tea was especially good, and summer tea could be slightly bitter. In the station's quality scoring, its first flush averaged 90.6 over three years, against 84.8 for Takachiho.

Too strong for home: why Izumi disappeared

Izumi's breeders wrote down the reason it would struggle, in the same paper that launched it. Their conclusion was that Izumi was very well suited to export and yielded more than twice as much as Takachiho, but "as a kamairicha for domestic demand, its flavour tends to be too strong" (内需用かまいり茶としては香味が強すぎるきらいがある) (Sanai and Amma, 1961).

Not every reviewer loved it, either. In 1958 the Miyazaki Prefectural Agricultural Experiment Station found the aroma strong and good but wanted a little more refinement, noted that the green colour lacked brightness, and described the taste as strong, with a lingering bitterness and astringency (Sanai and Amma, 1961, Table 6). For a sweetened export cup, that intensity was an asset. For an unsweetened Japanese cup, it was a problem.

Then the market it was built for went away. As Japan's economy boomed, tea turned toward domestic demand, and exports declined. Izumi was barely planted and became what its reviving grower calls a "phantom cultivar" (幻の品種) (grower's note, December 2019). Japanese Tea Sommelier's post on the Sashima black teas says the export effort was abandoned in the 1960s, and one Japanese tea writer dates the fading of those exports to around 1966 (やっとん, 2021).

I think this is the cleanest example I know of a cultivar that did exactly what it was bred to do and still lost. Nothing was wrong with the plant. It had the yield, the vigour and the export scores. It was simply tuned to one market, and when that market stopped buying from Japan, a strong-flavoured, blight-prone kamairicha had no domestic home. Our piece on Japan's dependence on Yabukita covers the other side of that coin: how the Japanese cup narrowed around one cultivar.

The modern record is thin. My Japanese Green Tea notes that "only a few tea farmers cultivate it," and most of what is written about Izumi today comes from those growers and a few tasters. That is why so much of this article rests on one document from 1961.

How Izumi was revived as Japanese black tea

Izumi's revival is best documented through a grower in Koga, in Ibaraki prefecture's Sashima tea district. According to the grower's English page, they began raising Izumi seedlings in 1992 and planted it in earnest from 2000 (About Izumi, retrieved 2026-09-14). Ibaraki prefecture's own food portal also dates the start to 1992 (Ibaraki prefectural food portal, retrieved 2026-09-14).

The Koga grower first made sencha and withered sencha from Izumi, then began making black tea from it in 2012 (About Izumi). The black tea is the part that closes the loop. A plant grown from a black tea mother, selected as a green tea for export, ended up most valued as a black tea, the purpose Benihomare had been bred for in the first place.

That black tea has done well. The Ibaraki prefectural food portal reports that an Izumi black tea from the Koga grower placed second of 463 entries, the 日本茶準大賞, at the 2019 Japan Tea Award. My Japanese Green Tea describes Izumi as a rare cultivar that growers now turn into black tea and oolong. It is also grown in Ashikita, Kumamoto, where one of the tastings below comes from.

If you enjoy chasing teas like this, our guide to rare Japanese teas covers pan-fired kamairicha and other teas you will rarely see outside Japan.

What Izumi tastes like today

Izumi today tastes like fruit. Across three tastings by two writers, peach comes up every time, and citrus and light astringency appear in some. None of these is the kamairicha the breeders scored in the 1950s, so read them as a picture of what the plant does now.

Black tea, Ashikita, Kumamoto (first flush 2020). A taster at The Floating Tea Stem brewed a lightly fermented black tea made from spring buds at a tea garden in Ashikita. The dry leaf smelled almost floral. The liquor was light amber, and the tea was full-bodied, smooth and rich, with a peach-like fruity note, a slightly sweet finish and mild astringency (The Floating Tea Stem, 15 September 2020).

Black tea, Sashima, spring against summer. Florent of Japanese Tea Sommelier tasted two Izumi black teas from the Sashima grower. The spring tea's dry leaf smelled of citrus, lemon and grapefruit, and the infusion was led by apricot and peach, milky, very sweet, with no tannic edge. The summer tea was more oxidised and milkier, with peach notes and very light astringency (Japanese Tea Sommelier, 9 December 2018).

Green tea, Sashima withered sencha (2007 harvest). Florent of Japanese Tea Sommelier also described, in January 2019, a withered sencha from the Sashima grower, picked in 2007 and kept as unrefined aracha in a fridge. Its herbal aromas had mostly faded by then, leaving stronger yellow fruit and citrus. The first infusion was silky, with peach as its signature and a very slight grapefruit-like bitterness, and later infusions showed a "delicate but real astringency" (Japanese Tea Sommelier, 21 January 2019).

Put the three together and a pattern appears. The intensity the breeders worried about is still there, only now it comes through as fruit and body in a black tea, where nobody minds a strong cup.

Izumi, Benifuji and Benifuuki: three paths from Benihomare

Benihomare left at least three registered children, and they went in different directions. The registry makes it easy to see side by side:

Registered Benihomare offspring in the Cha Norin list

Cultivar	Cha Norin No.	Parentage	Year	Registered use
Benifuji (べにふじ)	22	Benihomare x C19	1960	Black tea
Izumi (いずみ)	24	Benihomare seedling	1960	Pan-fired tamaryokucha
Benifuuki (べにふうき)	44	Benihomare x Makura Cd86	1993	Black tea and semi-fermented tea

The detail I find most striking is 1960. In the same year, two children of the same black tea mother were registered for opposite uses: Benifuji as a black tea at Kanaya, and Izumi as a pan-fired green tea in Kyushu (Cha Norin registry). One followed its mother. The other was pointed at a different market entirely, and decades later drifted back toward its mother's purpose anyway.

Benifuuki, registered in 1993, is the Benihomare child most people have heard of today. We cover it in our Benifuuki cultivar profile. For where pan-fired tea sits among the main Japanese styles, see our overview of the main types of Japanese green tea.

How to brew Izumi black tea

The most detailed brewing notes for Izumi come from one taster, The Floating Tea Stem, for a first flush black tea from Ashikita. Use them as a starting point, not a rule:

One taster's method for Izumi black tea (The Floating Tea Stem, 2020)

Infusion	Leaf	Water	Time
First	3 g	Just-boiled	3 minutes
Second	Same leaf	90°C	1 minute
Further	Same leaf	Adjust to taste	Up to four infusions in total

That long first steep with just-boiled water is very different from how you would brew a delicate Japanese green tea. If the cup tastes too brisk, shorten the time before lowering the temperature. The sources I found give no brewing parameters for the Sashima black teas, and none at all for Izumi as a kamairicha, so for a green Izumi you would be working from general sencha habits rather than from anything specific to this cultivar.

Whichever you have, give the first cup your full attention. The peach note in these tastings is easy to miss if you are drinking in the background. Smell the dry leaf first, then the wet leaf, then the cup. A tea this uncommon deserves that small pause.

Frequently asked questions

What is the Izumi tea cultivar?

Izumi (いずみ) is a Japanese tea cultivar registered in April 1960 as Cha Norin No. 24. It is a natural seedling of the black tea cultivar Benihomare, bred at the Kyushu Agricultural Experiment Station for pan-fired tamaryokucha to export to North Africa.

Is Izumi a green tea or a black tea cultivar?

Both, depending on the era. It was registered for pan-fired green tea (kamairicha) in 1960. Today it is made into black tea, and some growers also make oolong from it. A grower in Koga, Ibaraki began reviving it in 1992 and has made Izumi black tea since 2012.

What are Izumi's parent cultivars?

Its mother is Benihomare, Cha Norin No. 1, a black tea cultivar registered in 1953 from seed introduced from India. Izumi grew from Benihomare's naturally crossed seed, so its pollen parent is unknown.

Why is Izumi tea so rare?

It was bred for an export market that faded. Its breeders wrote in 1961 that its flavour was too strong for domestic kamairicha, and as exports declined it was barely planted and became a "phantom cultivar" until a few growers revived it.

How much did Izumi yield compared with other cultivars?

From 1956 to 1959, Izumi averaged 979 kg of fresh leaf per 10 a, an index of 210 against the kamairicha standard Takachiho (466 kg). It could be plucked six times a year, and about 70 percent of its crop came after the first flush.

Where is Izumi grown today?

Documented growers include one in Koga, in Ibaraki prefecture's Sashima tea district, reviving Izumi since 1992, and a tea garden in Ashikita, Kumamoto prefecture, whose first flush Izumi black tea was reviewed in 2020. My Japanese Green Tea notes that only a few tea farmers cultivate it.

A note from me

To be straightforward with you: we do not sell Izumi, and I have not tasted it myself. Everything above comes from the 1961 paper, the registry, and the growers and tasters I have cited. I write these cultivar pieces because the plants are the least told part of Japanese tea, and I would rather show you the record than dress it up.

What stays with me about Izumi is the phrase "too strong." Its breeders did everything right. They picked a vigorous plant, measured it carefully, and matched it to the cup they were aiming at. Then the world changed, and the very quality that made it good for one table made it wrong for another.

I find that a gentle lesson. Something that is too much in one place can be exactly right somewhere else. It took half a century and a black tea kettle, but Izumi found its cup. When I sit down with a tea, I try to remember that. What I taste says as much about the moment and the way I brew as it does about the leaf.

If you want to keep following the family, start with the Benifuuki profile linked above, Izumi's much younger half-sibling, and the cultivar guide linked at the top maps the rest.

Sources

• Sanai H., Amma S., 「かまいり茶用新登録品種「いずみ」について」 (A Newly Registered Tea Variety "Izumi" for Kamairitya), 茶業研究報告 (Tea Research Journal) No. 17, pp. 11-15, June 1961, via J-STAGE. Primary source: breeding history, export rationale, plant traits, Tables 2 to 6 and Figure 1, conclusion. Read in full, including the scanned tables. Retrieved 2026-09-14.
• Cha Norin registered cultivar list (茶農林登録品種一覧), publicly mirrored copy. Rows for Izumi (No. 24), Benihomare (No. 1), Takachiho (No. 11), Benifuji (No. 22) and Benifuuki (No. 44). Checked with Yabukita (No. 6) as a positive control. Retrieved 2026-09-14.
• The Izumi Tea Cultivar, My Japanese Green Tea. Rarity, net blister blight weakness, present-day black tea and oolong use. Retrieved 2026-09-14.
• Benihomare, My Japanese Green Tea. Registered the same year as Yabukita. Retrieved 2026-09-14.
• The Japanese tea cultivars, Japanese Tea Sommelier, 22 August 2022. Registered kamairi-cha cultivar table row for Izumi. Retrieved 2026-09-14.
• Black teas from Sashima (Izumi), Japanese Tea Sommelier, 9 December 2018. Spring and summer black tea tasting notes. Retrieved 2026-09-14.
• Sashima sencha, Izumi 2007, Japanese Tea Sommelier, 21 January 2019. Withered sencha tasting notes. Retrieved 2026-09-14.
• Tea tasting: Izumi first flush black tea, The Floating Tea Stem, 15 September 2020. Ashikita black tea, brewing method, tasting notes. Retrieved 2026-09-14.
• About Izumi, reviving grower's English page, Koga, Ibaraki. 1992 start, planting from 2000, sencha and withered sencha first, black tea from 2012. Retrieved 2026-09-14.
• Grower's note on Izumi, note.com, December 2019. North African export history and "phantom cultivar". Retrieved 2026-09-14.
• Ibaraki prefectural food portal. 1992 revival and the 2019 Japan Tea Award result. Retrieved 2026-09-14.
• やっとん, note.com, 2021. Name origin account (和泉, Chikugo) and the fading of exports around 1966. Single source, attributed as such. Retrieved 2026-09-14.
• Kubo N., Yokoyama H., Ohgushi T., Tea Cultivars in Japan, in Natural Products in Beverages, Reference Series in Phytochemistry, Springer, 2023. Reference list (viewed via OUCI) cites Sanai H., Amma S. (1961) "A newly registered tea variety 'Izumi' for kamairitya," Tea Res J 1961:11-15.