‘Sun Rouge’ is a cultivar of Japanese green tea, which has higher content of anthocyanin. The anthocyanin provides purplish color of tea leaves as shown in the following picture.

Tea plants of ‘Sun Rouge’ grown in Shizuoka tea estate.

Of course, the liquor color of ‘Sun Rouge’ tea is purplish as shown below.

Surprisingly, a small amount of acids can turn the color to reddish. We can arrange the color from pale pink to dark crimson according to the amount and concentration of the tea. Because of the unique feature, tea of ‘Sun Rouge’ is often used for cocktails in events, as posted before.

This unique feature of ‘Sun Rouge’ could give us a wide range of recipes by choosing acids as we like.
There are some candidate of natural acids included in commonly available foods. For example, acetic acid, citric acid, carbonate, lactic acid, malic acid etc.

In this post, I’d like to share 2 recipes using ‘Sun Rouge’ tea and plum liqueur.

(1) ‘Sun Rouge’ cocktail with plum liqueur and carbonate
Plum contains rich citric acid and the citric acid is solved into liqueur abundantly. Thus pouring the tea infusion of ‘Sun Rouge’ can turn the color to bright crimson.

Addition of carbonate water is also effective for color arrangement. Relatively decrease in anthocyanin concentration results in the pale pink color.

Color change by addition of ‘Sun Rouge’ tea and carbonate to plum liqueur.
(A) Only plum liqueur.
(B) Adding a small amount of ‘Sun Rouge’ tea into (A).
(C) Adding a small amount of carbonate into (B).
(D) Adding further carbonate to (C).

(2) Riging Sun to Indigo Sky through Purple Cloud
Ice of the tea infusion could extend the design of ‘Sun Rouge’ cocktail. If an ice of the condensed infusion is applied on the plum liqueur, we can make gradation from dark purple to yellow. I’d like to name it “Riging Sun” becaus it’s like a sun riging to the indigo sky through purple cloud”.

Proposal cocktail “Riging Sun”, like a sun riging to indigo sky through purple cloud.

Time elapsing results in change in the gradation. Dark purple turns to pale purple to brilliant pink.

Famous recipe established by a tea master
Mr. Sakurai, an artisan of tea and liqueur in Sakurai Tea Roasting Laboratory, has established new beverages using various teas and liqueurs. One of his original recipe “Hoshiko with ‘Sun Rouge’” is an unique plum liqueur of bright pale carmine color, in which loose leaf tea of ‘Sun Rouge’ is soaked. Photo of the unique liqueur can be seen in the other post.

Next time, I’d like to challenge making pickles colored soaked with ‘Sun Rouge’ in plum liqueur.