What Is Purple Tea & What Types/Cultivars Exist?

Forget green, black, and oolong tea for a moment. 'Purple tea' is becoming popular in the specialty tea world. As the already name suggests, it's made from tea plants that exhibit a distinct purple color in their young buds, leaves, stems, and stalks. The root of its beautiful purple hue is a powerful compound: anthocyanin.

Anthocyanins

Anthocyanins are water-soluble natural pigments found in foods like blueberries and purple cabbage. In the tea plant (Camellia sinensis), high concentrations of anthocyanins mask its green color, resulting in a beautiful purple appearance.

Purple Tea Cultivars and Classification

Tea categories, such as green, black, white, oolong, and dark, are defined by processing methods rather than by the plant variety itself. Purple tea is the exception. In this case, the distinction does not come from how the leaves are processed, but from the tea plants used to produce the tea. In terms of craft, purple tea is mostly processed into a black tea or raw pu erh tea.

1. The Chinese Originals: Zi Juan vs. Zi Ya

Zi Juan and Zi Ya represent two sides of the purple tea story in China.

Zi Juan

Zi Juan is a specific, registered cultivar, a “purebred” that was selected and stabilized by the Yunnan Academy of Agricultural Sciences in 1985 from a naturally occurring purple mother plant in Menghai. Its purple color is stable across buds, leaves, and stems throughout the year, and it maintains high, consistent anthocyanin levels thanks to careful selective breeding.

Our Velvet Mountain purple tea is made with a blend of Zi Juan tea leaves. Its liquor has a purple-red or golden-purple hue, which transitions beautifully across successive infusions. Moreover, thanks to the lower bitterness and astringency, higher amino-acid content contributes to a mellow, smooth mouthfeel with pronounced 'Huigan' (returning sweetness). When drinking our Velvet Mountain, you can feel the silky mouthfeel, as well as a surprisingly lingering and rich aftertaste.

Zi Ya

Zi Ya, on the other hand, is more of a natural phenomenon. It arises as a wild trait or mutation in ancient tea populations and depends heavily on environmental conditions. Its purple color is less stable, often appearing only in young spring buds and fading to green as the leaves mature. Anthocyanin levels in Zi Ya are variable, influenced by factors such as climate and UV exposure.

In short, Zi Juan is a carefully bred cultivar designed to preserve the purple, high-anthocyanin characteristics, while Zi Ya refers to naturally occurring purple-leaf traits whose expression can fluctuate by tree, season, and environment.

Note: there's another kind of purple tea from China known as wild purple Yabao tea. However, this tea isn't officially made from a cultivar of the Camellia Sinensis tea plant, but from the Camellia Crassicolumna plant.

2. International Cultivars: Kenya, India & Japan

While Yunnan is the birthplace of purple tea, its unique high-anthocyanin trait has inspired breeders worldwide. In Kenya, the Tea Research Foundation developed TRFK 306 and TRFK 306/1, which are leading cultivars for export-oriented purple tea. These cultivars are prized for their high anthocyanin content and adaptability across growing conditions.

Japan introduced Sunrouge, literally “Red Sun,” a purple-leaf cultivar notable for high anthocyanins and often lower caffeine. It’s processed as a premium steamed green tea (sencha) for the domestic health-focused market.

In Assam, India, BTR-1 was bred specifically for the region to produce a distinctive premium Assamese purple black tea, adding a regional twist to the global purple tea market.