Shizu-7132: The Sakura-Scented Tea That Never Got a Name

by Christian Mauerer, founder of One with Tea, who filmed with tea growers across Shizuoka in May 2025

Shizu-7132 is a Japanese tea plant that smells of cherry leaves, and it is not a cultivar. It is an unregistered breeding line, selected at the Shizuoka Prefectural Tea Experiment Station in the 1960s from open-pollinated Yabukita seed, and it never received a variety name. The Suruga Tengu organic growers' association puts it flatly: 「静7132は系統番号です。品種登録名はありません。」 Shizu-7132 is a line number. There is no registered variety name. The four digits are a filing number from the station that raised it, and half a century later they are still what the tea is called.

That matters more than it sounds. Most of the plants in our guide to Japanese tea cultivars earned a name because a breeding programme decided they were worth propagating. This one was turned down, kept alive anyway by growers in frost-prone mountain valleys, and eventually rescued by a co-operative that fell for its scent. We file it with the cultivars because that is where people look for it. The article explains why the label does not quite fit. We do not sell a Shizu-7132 tea, so nothing here is steering you toward a product.

Key Takeaways

• It is a line, not a cultivar. Shizu-7132 has no registered variety name. The number is the Shizuoka tea station's management number, and it stuck.
• The scent is coumarin, and it is measured. Green tea from Shizu-7132 carried 0.26 to 0.88 micrograms of coumarin per gram of product, against generally below 0.2 in common green tea (Yang et al., 2009).
• It was rejected for good agronomic reasons. Red summer leaf, dark liquor, stems too thick for the rolling machine, a short picking window, and two aromatic plants already in the programme.
• Frost saved it. Mountain growers kept it for its cold hardiness and called it 霜知らず, shimoshirazu, knows no frost.
• A tea picker named it. In 2002 a Shimizu co-operative branded it まちこ, Machiko, after the woman who picked it. It took the top gold prize at the 2009 World Green Tea Contest.

What is Shizu-7132?

Shizu-7132 is a tea plant selected in 1960s Shizuoka from the seed of Yabukita, Japan's dominant cultivar. Tea does not breed true from seed, so a Yabukita seedling is a genetic lottery ticket. This one produced a plant with an aroma no one was looking for and a set of field habits nobody wanted. The 静 in its name is the first character of Shizuoka. The digits are the experiment station's management number, and the 7000 block covers the selections raised from Yabukita seed there in the late 1960s and early 1970s.

The clearest outside confirmation that it was never registered comes from the paperwork of its own child. Tsuyuhikari, registered in 2003 as variety No. 11103, was bred from Shizu-7132 crossed with Asatsuyu. Japan's variety registration record for Tsuyuhikari names Asatsuyu in quotation marks and describes the other parent only as 「出願者所有の育成系統」, a breeding line owned by the applicant. The ministry names a registered parent and cannot name an unregistered one. Shizu-7132's offspring has a name on a government register. Shizu-7132 does not.

Shizu-7132 at a glance

Attribute	Detail
Japanese name	静7132. Branded まちこ (Machiko) in Shimizu, and sometimes sold as sakura-kaori
Status	Unregistered breeding line (系統). No registered variety name
Bred at	Shizuoka Prefectural Tea Experiment Station (静岡県茶業試験場)
Bred	The 1960s (昭和40年代). Florent Weber gives 1967 specifically
Parentage	Open-pollinated Yabukita seed. The pollen parent is unknown and unrecorded
Series	The 静 7000 block, with Suruga-wase 7109, Kurasawa 7111, Yamakai 7166, Fujimidori 7224
Signature	Coumarin, the cherry-leaf scent of the sweet called sakura-mochi
Plant	Thick stems, upright habit, heavy-shoot type (芽重型), strong against anthracnose, strong against frost
Grown in	Shizuoka. Shimizu Ward including Ryogochi, Hon.yama, Kawane, Nearai in Hamamatsu, Makinohara
Known offspring	Tsuyuhikari (つゆひかり), registered 2003

Why it never got a name

Shizu-7132 was never registered, and the reasons on the record are agronomic rather than anything to do with the aroma it is now prized for. Florent Weber, the first French Nihoncha Instructor to work in Japan, lists five of them, and a sixth comes from his 2015 note:

• Red summer leaf. Very heavy shoots turn the leaf red on summer harvests.
• Dark liquor. The infusion colour comes out too dark.
• Astringency on the plains. Grown off the mountain slopes, it gives too much astringency.
• A clashing harvest. It falls at the same time as Kurasawa.
• The aromatic slot was filled. Yamakai and Fujimidori were already in the programme.
• A short picking window. The ideal harvesting period is short.

Then there is the machine problem. Shizu-7132 has thick, hard stems. One grower, quoted by the Japanese tea navigator Tomoko, describes the daily reality: the leaf is thin but the stem is hard, so drying the moisture out through the stem takes effort, and among lightly steamed senchas it is one of the toughest plants to shape. A tea that fights the rolling line costs a factory time on every batch. The Japanese retailer Teplo adds the first impression that shaped everything after it: the new shoots came up red, the plant looked odd, and it drew little attention, so it kept its management number.

Read that list against what the industry was asking for and the rejection stops looking like a mistake. Weber names the part that matters most here: until recently, the trade also wanted a cultivar that blended easily with other teas, which is the same appetite for interchangeable leaf that produced Yabukita's near-monopoly. A plant whose entire point is that it tastes of one specific thing is, by that standard, a defect. Shizu-7132 lost to Yamakai and Fujimidori not because it was worse, but because the programme had already filled the aromatic slot and had no room for a third difficult plant.

Where the cherry-leaf scent comes from

The compound is coumarin, and this is the part of the story that is not anecdote. In 2009 a measurement was published in Food Chemistry. Green tea made from Shizu-7132, Koshun (spelled Koushun in the paper) and Tsuyuhikari was found to have a sweet-herbaceous odour, and an isotope dilution assay put the coumarin in those products at 0.26 to 0.88 micrograms per gram, where common green tea products generally sit below 0.2. The same abstract records two things a tea maker would care about: the leaf holds far more coumarin than the stem, and the steaming time and drying temperature both move the number in the finished tea.

Coumarin is the same aroma compound that sits in the salted cherry leaf wrapped around sakura-mochi, and both comparisons are used in Japan: producers write of a cherry-like scent and a cherry-blossom aroma, while tasters reach for the sweet itself. The Shizuoka tea maker Hagiri makes the contrast that gives the plant its whole identity: the tea carries a cherry-like scent with no added flavouring and no additives because it is rich in coumarin, and Yabukita, the parent it grew from, contains none. A seedling picked up something its mother did not have.

Two practical consequences follow, and both are sourced rather than folklore. Because the leaf holds far more coumarin than the stem, the finishing choice of whether to sort the stems out changes the cup. And because steaming time and drying temperature both move the number, the same garden can send two lots to two factories and get two measurably different teas.

What Shizu-7132 tastes like

Shizu-7132 tastes like a sweet, floral sencha dominated by the scent of Japanese cherry leaves, with a strong yellow liquor and an almond or frangipane note behind it. It is not a flavoured tea and it does not arrive as a wall of cherry. Florent Weber has written about it five times between 2012 and 2020, from three districts, which makes him the closest thing this plant has to a longitudinal record. On a lightly steamed sencha from Tawaramine in Hon.yama he found an astonishing sweet fragrance, floral but completely dominated by the scent of Japanese cherry leaves, immediately bringing sakura-mochi to mind, with a strong yellow liquor and something that resembles frangipane, stimulating rather than astringent. On a Warashina lot he added notes of almond and anise, and something more suave, almost alcoholic, reminiscent of fermented grape and rice. From Kawane he called the dry-leaf fragrance sweet and sour, typical of 7132, really very gourmand.

Set against that, one dissent is worth more than the praise. The Japanese tea navigator Tomoko writes for a general Japanese audience, and she is more measured. From the dry leaf the cherry scent is only faintly perceptible. Brewed, it drifts up as a faint aroma of cherry and cinnamon. It never reaches the strength of sakura-mochi itself, which is why she thinks even people who dislike cherry scent can drink it. She also gives the single most useful piece of advice anyone has written about this tea: let it cool a little and the cherry aroma comes forward.

Both accounts are honest, and the gap between them is the thing to understand before buying any. This is a green tea with an unusual top note that rewards attention and rewards patience. Weber's 2020 observation closes the loop: maturation does a lot with this plant, and even during the steep, oxidation increases the fragrance, which is precisely why letting the liquor cool works.

Machiko: the tea a tea picker named

In 2002 a group in Shimizu went looking for a brand tea for their district and gathered candidate green teas to taste. JA Shimizu tells the rest of it in one sentence that is hard to improve on: it was a tea called Shizu-7132 that, more than fifty years earlier, had failed to become a variety. The person who gave the nameless green tea a name was Machiko, a tea picker. Because a nameless tea became happy on receiving a name, they called it 幸せのお茶まちこ, Machiko, the tea of happiness, so that people who drink it might become happy too.

The brand worked. Machiko took the top gold prize at the 2009 World Green Tea Contest, and Shizuoka Prefecture's own food information centre now lists it, describing thin, glossy leaf and a faint cherry-leaf aroma. That listing is worth reading closely, because it calls Shizu-7132 a 茶品種, a tea variety. The prefecture's recommended-cultivar lists and the industry's own variety guides leave it out entirely, and the register has no entry for it. Casual use and formal use have drifted apart, and this article follows the register.

There is a small irony in the naming that I like. The breeding programme withholds names as a verdict, and the number is the mark of the verdict. Machiko is a name given by someone who was in the field with the plant rather than assessing it, and it is the name the tea is now sold under. The register still has nothing to say about Shizu-7132.

Where Shizu-7132 actually grows

Almost entirely in Shizuoka, and the centre of gravity is Shimizu Ward, where the Machiko brand lives. Inside Shimizu sits Ryogochi (両河内), a mountain valley district where Houkouen grows more than twenty cultivars at 350 metres and sells a single-origin Shizu-7132 black tea, and where the Suruga Tengu organic association lists it among the plants in its Ryogochi garden. I filmed on Houkouen's slopes in May 2025. We did not taste their Shizu-7132 and did not discuss it, so I am citing their shop rather than my notebook, but standing in that garden makes the frost story concrete in a way a document does not.

Beyond Shimizu there are four more districts with named growers behind them. Hon.yama in Aoi Ward is where Weber found it most often, at Tawaramine, Warashina and Kiyosawa. Kawane has Mr. Konishi in the Moto-Fujikawa area. In Nearai, in Hamamatsu, Mr. Tarui uses Shizu-7132 as his main plant, ahead of Yabukita, which is a remarkable thing for a grower to do with an unregistered line. And on the Makinohara plateau it is deep-steamed and sold as a numbered single-cultivar tea. For the wider picture of how these districts differ, see our guide to the Shizuoka tea region.

What holds all of that together is cold. Shizu-7132 is strong against frost, and growers gave it the nickname 霜知らず, shimoshirazu, the one that knows no frost. In a mountain valley where a late frost can take the first flush, a plant that shrugs off cold is worth keeping even when the factory dislikes it and the register ignores it. That is the actual mechanism by which this tea survived from the 1960s to 2002 with no name and no institutional support.

Green, withered, black: the three ways it is made

Green tea is the main use, and it is worth stating because the cherry scent makes people assume the leaf must be oxidised to get there. It does not. The 2009 measurement was taken on green tea products, and every tasting note above is on a sencha. Withering and oxidation intensify the aroma. They do not create it.

The second lane is withering. Some producers wilt the leaf briefly before steaming, which is not a step in standard sencha, to push the aroma further forward. Senchado Tokyo describes exactly that on its Makinohara lot, withered first, which leaves the colour a slightly muted green, then deep-steamed. Tomoko reports the same practice spreading, alongside pan-fired and deep-steamed versions, with the variations increasing lately.

The third is black tea. Houkouen withers and ferments it into a single-origin Japanese black tea and describes the result as the plant's characteristic strong cherry-blossom aroma arriving after a sugar-like sweetness, working in synergy with the fermentation aroma. Shinkoju, a specialist in single-cultivar tea, sells Shizu-7132 four ways at once: regular sencha, deep-steamed, pan-fired, and black. If you want the wider context for these less common styles, our guide to rare Japanese teas covers the territory. What no source describes is a Shizu-7132 oolong, so I am not going to call this a semi-fermented plant.

How to brew Shizu-7132

Weber's numbers for a good Hon.yama lot are the most specific on record, and they are cooler and more concentrated than standard sencha advice:

1. Use about 5 grams of leaf, a generous teaspoon and a half, for 70 millilitres of water. This is a small-volume, high-leaf brew.
2. Bring the water down to 60 degrees Celsius, or 60 to 65 for a higher grade. Hot water pushes the top note away.
3. Steep 90 seconds.
4. Let the liquor cool slightly in the cup before you drink it. Both Weber and Tomoko independently arrive at this, and oxidation during the steep is the reason it works.

Two further notes from people who have handled it. If your tea arrives with the stems left in, that is often deliberate: Weber credits the finisher of one lot with the choice not to remove them, because the stems bring a sweetness that balances leaf which can run high in tannin. And give a new bag a few days. On a deep-steamed lot from Nearai he found the leaf took on its sweet fragrance only some days after opening, and that the first infusion could lack aroma. Hagiri reports the same trait from the maker's side, that the cherry scent is stronger a while after the fresh-tea season than during it. If you want the general framework before adjusting it for this plant, start with our guide to brewing green tea.

We do not sell a Shizu-7132 tea and have no plans to. This article exists because the plant is worth knowing about, and because the English-language material on it is thin and repeats a few claims I could not confirm at source. If you want to drink it, buy from the Shizuoka producers cited at the end.

What stays with me about this plant is how close it came to disappearing, and what it was saved by. Not quality, which the programme could see perfectly well, and not advocacy. It was saved by cold, by a handful of growers in valleys where frost decides the year, who kept an awkward plant because it did not flinch. The scent that makes it interesting now was, for forty years, beside the point. Then someone gathered teas in Shimizu, smelled cherry leaves, and gave it a name.

Buying tea for a shop, cafe or studio? We supply organic Japanese tea at wholesale, with the same attention to where each lot comes from. See our wholesale program, or get in touch and tell us what you are pouring.

Frequently asked questions

Is Shizu-7132 a cultivar?

Not in the formal sense. It is an unregistered breeding line, a 系統, and it has no registered variety name in Japan. English sources often call it a cultivar as shorthand, and we keep it filed with the other Japanese tea cultivars because that is where readers look for it, but the distinction is the whole story of the plant.

Why does Shizu-7132 smell like cherry blossom?

Because of coumarin, the same aroma compound found in the salted cherry leaf used to wrap sakura-mochi. A 2009 study in Food Chemistry measured 0.26 to 0.88 micrograms per gram in green tea from Shizu-7132, Koshun and Tsuyuhikari, against generally below 0.2 in common green tea. No flavouring is added, and the parent plant, Yabukita, contains none.

Is Machiko the same tea as Shizu-7132?

Yes. Machiko (まちこ) is the brand name JA Shimizu and the Shimizu tea group gave to Shizu-7132 in 2002, after a tea picker of that name. It is sold as 幸せのお茶まちこ, the tea of happiness, and won the top gold prize at the 2009 World Green Tea Contest.

What does Shizu-7132 have to do with Tsuyuhikari?

Shizu-7132 is its seed parent. Tsuyuhikari, registered in 2003, was bred by crossing it with Asatsuyu. Tsuyuhikari also turned up alongside Shizu-7132 and Koshun in the 2009 coumarin study as a tea with the same sweet-herbaceous odour.

When is Shizu-7132 harvested?

The sources disagree, so we are not going to give you a window. Weber places its harvest at the same time as Kurasawa and notes that the ideal picking period is short. The one hard, dated record we found is a single garden in a single season: a Kawane lot from Moto-Fujikawa picked on 15 May 2017.

How much Shizu-7132 is planted in Japan?

Nobody publishes that figure. Japan reports tea area by prefecture rather than by cultivar, and an unregistered line does not appear in the recommended-cultivar statistics that track the named plants. Shizu-7132 is also absent from both Shizuoka's recommended cultivar list and the prefectural tea council's promoted-cultivar guidebook. Any hectare number you see for it is an estimate.

Sources

• Suruga Tengu, Shizuoka Organic Tea Farmers' Association (駿河天狗・静岡有機茶農家の会), "静7132": grower page, in Japanese. The statement that it is a line number with no registered variety name, the plant characteristics, and the Ryogochi organic garden.
• JA Shimizu Kirari (JAしみず「きらり」), "幸せのお茶まちこ": brand page, in Japanese. The 2002 naming, the tea picker Machiko, "failed to become a variety," and the 2009 World Green Tea Contest top gold prize.
• Shizuoka Prefecture, Shizuoka Food Information Centre (しずおか食の情報センター), "まちこ": official prefectural listing, in Japanese. The official description of the brand and its producers.
• Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries, plant variety registration No. 11103, Tsuyuhikari: registration record, in Japanese. The wording that names Asatsuyu but calls the other parent only a breeding line owned by the applicant.
• Yang, Kinoshita, Tanida, Sayama, Morita and Watanabe, "Analysis of coumarin and its glycosidically bound precursor in Japanese green tea having sweet-herbaceous odour," Food Chemistry 114(1), 2009, pp. 289 to 294: journal record. The coumarin measurement, the leaf and stem difference, and the effect of steaming and drying. Abstract only.
• Hagiri (葉桐), "静7132": producer page, in Japanese. Coumarin as the reason for the scent, the absence of coumarin in Yabukita, frost hardiness, and the aroma strengthening after the fresh-tea season.
• Shinkoju (心向樹), cultivar list: specialist retailer, in Japanese. Selection from open-pollinated Yabukita seed in the 1960s, the management number, and the Tsuyuhikari parentage.
• Houkouen (豊好園), single-origin Japanese black tea, Shizu-7132: shop page, in Japanese. The withered and fermented black tea from Ryogochi and its description of the aroma.
• Senchado Tokyo (煎茶堂東京), "040 静7132": shop page, in Japanese. Withering before deep steaming, and the Makinohara origin.
• Tomoko, Japanese tea navigator, Yahoo! News Expert: article, in Japanese. The faint-aroma dissent, the cooling advice, the grower's account of hard stems, and the spread of withered, pan-fired and deep-steamed versions.
• Florent Weber, Japanese Tea Sommelier, "The Japanese tea cultivars," 2022: blog post. The 7000 series membership, the unknown pollen parent, and the reasons it was never registered.
• Florent Weber, "Hon.yama sencha from Tawaramine, Shizu-7132 cultivar," 2012: blog post. The sakura-mochi tasting note, the brewing parameters, and the argument for leaving the stems in.
• Florent Weber, "An intoxicating fragrance, two Shizu-7132 from Hon.yama," 2015: blog post. The almond and anise notes, the short harvesting period, and the difficulty of rolling thick stems.
• Florent Weber, "Shizu-7132 and Koshun sencha from Kawane," 2017: blog post. Mr. Konishi in Moto-Fujikawa and the 15 May 2017 harvest date.
• Florent Weber, "Fukamushi-cha from Nearai, Shizu-7132," 2018: blog post. Mr. Tarui using it as his main plant, and the leaf needing days after opening.
• Florent Weber, "Kawane senchas II," 2020: blog post. Maturation and the effect of oxidation during the steep, which is the reason for letting the liquor cool.
• Teplo, "静7132": retailer page, in Japanese. The red new shoots, the plant attracting little attention, and the management number sticking in place of a name.
• Houkouen (豊好園), farm site: producer site, in Japanese. The Ryogochi location, the 350 metre elevation and the twenty-plus cultivars grown there.
• Shizuoka Tea Merchants' Co-operative (静岡茶商工業協同組合): industry article, in Japanese. The list of Shizuoka's recommended cultivars, which does not include Shizu-7132.
• Shizuoka Prefectural Tea Industry Council (静岡県茶業会議所), promoted cultivar guidebook: industry body, in Japanese. The list of promoted cultivars, which does not include Shizu-7132.