Sawamizuka

Sawamizuka is a late-budding sencha cultivar crossed from Yabukita and the older, unregistered cultivar Fujimidori, bred at what was then Shizuoka Prefecture’s own tea experiment station. It buds about six days after Yabukita, carries a noticeably higher yield, and its makers were candid that its aroma is simply different from Yabukita’s rather than an improvement on it — cleaner and more refreshing, without claiming to outclass the reference cultivar it was crossed from. It was selected in 1966, spent nearly three decades in trial and promotion, and was eventually registered in 1995 — not as a 茶農林 (Cha Norin) number, as most cultivars of its era were, but under the Plant Variety Protection Act. It remains a minor cultivar today, used mostly by Shizuoka’s larger cooperative processing factories rather than the specialty single-cultivar market, and is correspondingly hard to find in cultivar references and vendor catalogues.

Lineage

• Yabukita ♀ — the seed parent, contributing vigour, vegetal balance and the general build the cultivar is measured against.
• Fujimidori ♂ — the pollen parent, contributing the aroma that reads as distinct from Yabukita’s. Fujimidori is itself a cultivar in name only: it was never registered.

This is a controlled cross rather than a landrace selection — both parents are named and documented — but the pedigree is only half complete once traced back a generation. Fujimidori was first tracked under the trial number Shizu-7224 (静7224) and named in 1962 for its unusual aroma and flavour; its seed parent was Yabukita, but the pollen parent was never recorded, since it was raised as an open-pollinated seedling rather than a deliberate cross. No cultivars bred from Sawamizuka itself were found in the sources consulted.

History

Sawamizuka was bred at the Shizuoka Prefectural Tea Experiment Station (静岡県茶業試験場), the prefecture’s own research institute — now reorganised as the Shizuoka Prefecture Tea Industry Research Center (静岡県茶業研究センター) — rather than at the national Tea Experiment Station at nearby Kanaya, which bred cultivars such as Kanayamidori under the separate Cha Norin system. Yabukita was crossed with Fujimidori sometime after Fujimidori’s own naming in 1962, and the best seedling from that cross was selected in 1966. It was carried through regional trials from 1974, and in 1992 it was formally named Sawamizuka and recognised as a high-quality cultivar, after which its planting was actively promoted within Shizuoka.

Registration followed on 9 March 1995, but under the Plant Variety Protection Act (種苗法) rather than as a Cha Norin number. MAFF’s own 登録品種データベース carries the record: registration No. 4292, applied for as No. 5399 by Shizuoka Prefecture on 31 July 1992, bred by Hidaka Tamotsu, Kuranuki Koichi and Nakamura Noriyuki, the breeder’s right running its full 18-year term to 10 March 2013. The Shizuoka Tea Industry Council’s guidebook leaflet says the same in as many words — 平成7年に種苗法による品種登録が行われました. Everything around it agrees: Sawamizuka does not appear anywhere in the national 茶農林登録品種一覧 (the MAFF Cha Norin registry table), which otherwise runs continuously from No. 1 (1953) to No. 52 and has no entries at all between 1993 and 1997; it is likewise absent from NARO’s own handbook of nationally funded tea cultivars, which covers only cultivars bred with national money at institutions such as Kanaya, Makurazaki and the prefectural stations working under the national programme. The Council’s guidebook leaflet for Sawamizuka marks its “variety registration” field as present (有), where the equivalent leaflet for the Cha-Norin-numbered Kanayamidori marks the same field absent (無) — that field tracks Seed and Seedling Law status specifically, independent of any Cha Norin number, and confirms Sawamizuka was registered through the newer, prefecture-usable route rather than the older national one.

The name

Sawamizuka is written in hiragana in every source found, with no settled kanji. The name is a deliberate piece of wordplay: it evokes 沢水 (sawamizu), the fragrance of clear mountain-stream water, while also nodding to 沢水加, the name of the locality near where the cultivar was bred — a place name that is itself read differently (Sabaka), so the cultivar’s name borrows its characters’ shape rather than their sound.

Characteristics

Sawamizuka is late-budding (晩生), picked around six days after Yabukita. Tree vigour is strong, cuttings root easily, and young plants establish well. Mature leaves are long and oval, medium in size, and a deep green that is less lustrous than Yabukita’s; young leaves are oval and slightly smaller. Cold hardiness is reported as roughly equivalent to Yabukita’s. Among diseases, it is fairly resistant to anthracnose, has medium resistance to ring spot disease, and is weak against bacterial shoot blight. Yield runs higher than Yabukita’s, though no kg/10a trial figure was found in the sources consulted.

Processing depth matters more than usual for this cultivar. Under light steaming (asamushi), the finished leaf can take on a reddish tinge and an excess of astringency; it is better suited to deep steaming (fukamushi), and under ordinary sencha processing it gives a cup with a light astringency alongside real freshness and body. The aroma is explicitly described as unlike Yabukita’s rather than better or worse than it — clean and refreshing — and the liquor colour is reported as holding up well against Yabukita’s own. That combination of strong vigour, high yield and dependable quality is what has kept it in use among larger cooperative-factory producers, even though it has never become a specialty or single-cultivar favourite the way some of its contemporaries did.