The Harney & Sons Guide to Tea - Michael Harney [31]
With the exception of Lapsang Souchong, these black teas may initially seem too light. Especially to those of you who are accustomed to more robust Assams or Earl Grey, Chinese black teas may at first seem underbrewed. You’re not alone. Some of my finest British hotel customers have rejected my English Breakfast blend as too weak because I make it with Chinese black teas. (There’s a great saying: The British like a tea so strong, their spoon stands up in it). For those hotels, I now make a more spoon-friendly blend with brisker teas from India. That said, an open mind can be filled with new experiences. Spoon or no spoon, these Chinese teas, both ancient and more recent, can be extraordinary to sip.
GOLDEN MONKEY
A new tea developed for export from China in just the last ten or fifteen years, Golden Monkey has quickly attracted a loyal, almost cultlike following. With its lightly sweet, apricot aroma and hints of semisweet chocolate in the taste, it is now more popular in the United States and Europe than its older Chinese black tea cousins.
One sign of its youth is its rather innovative name. Most Chinese teas have two names, the first for the place of origin and the second for the style of leaf. Keemun Mao Feng, for example, is a Mao Feng style of tea from Keemun. Golden Monkey means nothing. For marketing purposes only, as “Monkey” usually does in tea names, it’s meant to suggest a high-quality tea.
Golden Monkey comes from Saowu, a region outside the city of Fu’an near the coast in northern Fujian province. As with other black-tea areas in China, little green tea of any quality comes from here. The type of tea grown in the region is Da Bai (“big white”), a cultivar used in white tea (see “Yin Zhen,” page 21). While the history is vague, it seems safe to assume that when the British export market collapsed, as in other regions, tea growers began experimenting, here first with white teas and now black.
Golden Monkey is made by a process similar to that for Panyong Congou (page 110). Tea makers harvest the leaves when the tips are as large as possible but before they have begun to form whole leaves. The tips are sweet, as they are with white teas, containing extra sugars to help the bud grow into a full leaf. However, in white teas, the bud loses its incipient chlorophyll and becomes white as the tea dries. In black tea, the same bud oxidizes to a golden color. The only trade-off: With more tips, the teas are sweeter but also lighter, with less body.
PANYONG GOLDEN NEEDLE
Panyong Golden Needle, as its name suggests, has plenty of nice golden tips to make it light and sweet. As the tea has fewer tips than Golden Monkey, it also has a bit more body and more assertive fruit and nut flavors.
Panyong (also called Tanyang) is a town located in northeastern Fujian province, near Fu’an. Though the region is better known for its white teas and art teas, it has produced black teas for at least the last two hundred years. The best black teas from northern Fujian are described as tippy, for the heavy presence of golden tips. (The tips, or buds, turn from white to gold during oxidation.) Unlike the coiled, floral Golden Monkey, Panyong Golden Needle has straight, needlelike leaves with nuttier flavors but similar fruity charms. The flat leaves can have a pleasant sheen to them: They are polished in a slightly heated wok, rubbed up against the metal surface repeatedly to polish them. Unlike the more heavily fired black teas from the Wuyi Shan region, Panyong teas are finished in an oven. Discerning tea makers do not like fire flavors to overpower these rounded teas.
PANYONG CONGOU
Continuing our progression from light and sweet to dark and smoky, we have Panyong Congou, which exhibits fewer honey notes but greater