The Harney & Sons Guide to Tea - Michael Harney [33]
YUNNAN BLACK TEA
If Keemuns are the aristocrats of Chinese black teas, Yunnan black teas are the poor but happy cousins. Earthy, almost gutty and assertive, the teas also have a sociable maple sweetness to give them accessible charm. This sugared note makes for an instructive contrast to the sophisticated, subdued chocolate flavors of Keemuns. The maple and chocolate notes are both products of the Maillard reaction that occurs during firing, when amino acids and glucosides in the leaves combine to form compounds called “pyrroles” and “pyrazines,” chemicals that have sweet roasted flavors. Yunnan and Keemun leaves have different levels of amino acids; those in Yunnan form pyrazines that remind me of cooked maple sap.
Yunnan black tea comes from a remote region of China on the border of Laos and Burma, where tea is thought to have originated. Most teas from this region are aged to make puerhs (page 173). Puerhs have become so popular, it is getting harder and harder to find unaged ordinary Yunnan black tea. But it is worth searching out. Yunnan black tea offers a delicious combination of full body and sweetish flavors, with a certain earthiness and even a mild pepperiness, balanced by the sugars from lots of tip. There is even a 100 percent golden tip tea made in Yunnan, called Dianhong. Teas made entirely of tips are so expensive, I wanted to include only one in the book. Because I find Dianhong inferior, I’ve chosen Golden Tip Assam (page 144).
LAPSANG SOUCHONG
With a captivating smoky flavor unlike any other tea—black, green, or otherwise—Lapsang Souchong is the oldest and among the most beloved of all the black teas from China. When I first started in the tea business with my father in the mid-1980s, Lapsang Souchong was one of the half dozen teas we sold. Today we sell over three hundred teas, but Lapsang remains a favorite. It’s been sold in the United States for two hundred years.
There are countless varieties of Lapsang Souchong. Lesser varieties are generally more acrid and more intense, while the finest are lighter and more refined. Though teas marketed as Lapsang Souchong now come from all over the world, the true version still comes from the spot considered to be the birthplace of black tea, China’s Wuyi Mountains, in the northern part of Fujian province. No one knows why or how black teas started there; as with the other black teas in this chapter, it probably had something to do with the fact that the green teas grown there weren’t that great. I rarely find green teas in the Wuyi region, only black teas and oolongs. Even the oolongs, called Wuyi Mountain Rock Teas, are among the darker varieties (see “Da Hong Pao,” page 93).
The Wuyi Preserve is breathtaking. Surrounded by a stark forest of dark pine and light bamboo, the road to the tea-growing regions rises through a narrowing canyon along a raging stream. Inside this chasm, tea plants are naturally protected: The special cultivar that grows here is prevented from breeding with any other. The plants grow low to the ground and are allowed to spread on their own, untreated with chemicals or fertilizers. As a result, harvesting from the rambling, low bushes is tough work.
Until only a few years ago, the production method for Lapsang Souchong was a closely guarded secret. As the Chinese government devolves control of its tea factories back to private citizens, however, access to this information has improved, as have the teas themselves.
Lapsang Souchong leaves are infused with their smoke flavors in two stages. Once they are harvested, the leaves are withered for two hours to make them supple, in a room above a chamber where an even fire of native pine logs slowly smolders.
After withering, the leaves are rolled to form small, spindly needles. The rolling starts the oxidation. The oxidizing needles are loaded up in tall woven bamboo baskets and covered with a cloth. Gathered together in deep baskets and covered from the open