Ingredients · Tea

Black Tea

Camellia sinensis · Theaceae (tea family)

Black Tea
The leaf of one evergreen shrub, fully oxidised. Black, green, white and oolong tea are all Camellia sinensis; what separates them is what is done to the leaf in the hours after it is picked. Black tea is withered, rolled to break the cells open, left to oxidise until it darkens, then fired to stop it. That is what gives it the body to carry milk, sugar and spice — which is why twenty-two products here are built on it, and why nearly every flavoured blend that needs a backbone gets a black one.

What it’s like, and how to use it

The partLeaf
KindTea
CaffeineContains caffeine
Where it is fromChina (native range)
TasteMalt, honey, dark amber; brisk and full, with tannin enough to take milk
How to brew it
  • 212°F / 100°C
  • 3 to 5 minutes
  • longer turns it harsh

How to use it

Boiling water, 3 to 5 minutes. Longer and the tannins turn it harsh, which is what people mean by stewed. Takes milk, sugar, lemon and spice. The base for masala chai, for iced tea, and for almost every flavoured blend that has to survive being flavoured.

With food

Milk and cream. Toast, scones and shortbread. Smoked and cured meat. Sharp cheese. Dark chocolate. Lemon. A full breakfast.

With spices

Cardamom, ginger, cinnamon, cloves and black pepper for chai. Bergamot for Earl Grey. Vanilla. Orange peel.

With tea

Blended across origins is the norm, not the exception: a breakfast blend is usually Assam for body and Ceylon for brightness.

Its story

Where it comes from

The plant originated in the borderlands of southwestern China, northeast India and northern Myanmar. Two varieties do most of the work: var. sinensis, the small-leafed Chinese plant behind most Chinese, Taiwanese and Japanese teas, and var. assamica, the large-leafed plant of Assam behind most Indian teas and pu-erh. World production of made tea reached 6.7 million tonnes in 2022, nearly half of it Chinese. Our unnamed black teas carry no origin claim.

What happened

Tea was being drunk in China by the second century BC — the earliest physical evidence is from the mausoleum of Emperor Jing of Han at Xi'an. Lu Yu wrote the Classic of Tea around 760 CE. In 1391 the Hongwu emperor decreed that only loose tea would be accepted as tribute, and within two centuries loose leaf had replaced cake and powdered tea entirely. It reached Japan with the monk Eisai in the twelfth century, Tibet in the seventh, Russia by camel caravan from 1679, and Europe with the Portuguese and then the Dutch, whose first recorded shipment sailed from Macao to Java in 1607. Thomas Garway sold the first tea in London in 1657; Samuel Pepys tried a cup in 1660. What followed is not a pleasant story: Britain's thirst for tea drained silver to China, British merchants answered by selling opium grown in British India, and the First Opium War ended with an indemnity, five treaty ports and Hong Kong ceded. Then Britain broke China's monopoly by planting tea in India and Ceylon — with Chinese know-how stolen by Robert Fortune, and on the labour of indentured workers whose story is told in the Assam, Darjeeling and Ceylon entries.

On the shelf with it

Every product it goes into.

Every ingredient in the shop

Explore

Other ways in

Ingredients Every plant, seed, bark and salt in the shop on one page — what it is, why it is in the blend, and where it comes from. See them all Collections Every shelf in the shop on one page — teas by leaf and flavour, spices by kind and cuisine. Open any shelf to see what is on it. Browse the shelves The Showroom The whole shop on one floor — every tea, spice and blend, filtered by what you are after, with the basket beside you. Open the Showroom Elsewhere Seventeen short trips — a place, a moment, a feeling — each with the teas and spices that get you there. Take a trip