Ingredients · Tea

Chinese Black Tea

Camellia sinensis · Theaceae (tea family)

Chinese Black Tea
China calls it red tea, for the colour of the cup rather than the leaf, and its most famous style is Keemun — from Qimen County in the hills of southern Anhui, between the Yellow Mountains and the Yangtze. Keemun is withered and oxidised slowly, and what comes out is stone fruit, a faint wisp of smoke, a malty cup reminiscent of unsweetened cocoa, and a floral lift from a higher share of geraniol than other black teas. Two products carry it. Its cousin congou was the base of the nineteenth-century English Breakfast blend.

What it’s like, and how to use it

The partLeaf
KindTea
CaffeineContains caffeine
Where it is fromChina
TasteStone fruit, a faint wisp of smoke, cocoa and a floral lift; malty without astringency
How to brew it
  • 212°F / 100°C
  • 3 to 4 minutes
  • good with or without milk

How to use it

Boiling water, 3 to 4 minutes. It takes milk but does not need it, and it is one of the few black teas genuinely good drunk plain. Good in a breakfast blend, and the usual base of Russian Caravan.

With food

Dark chocolate and cocoa. Stone fruit and dried plum. Smoked meat. Mushroom. Shortbread. Rose.

With spices

Rose, as in the shop's Congou Rose. Bergamot. Cinnamon. Star anise. Five-spice.

With tea

Blended into breakfast teas and Russian Caravan; scented with rose in the Chinese mei gui hong cha tradition.

Its story

Where it comes from

Qimen County in Anhui, and also Guichi, Shitai, Dongzhi and Yixian. The Keemun cultivar is the same one used for Huangshan Maofeng, an old green tea. Our product is titled Keemun Estate; no garden, elevation or grade is recorded.

What happened

Keemun has a firm date and a contested hero. It was first produced in 1875, using black-tea techniques adapted from Fujian farmers, in a county that until then is said to have made only green tea — and the usual telling is that it was Anhui's answer to the plantation teas India had begun turning out. The story names Yu Ganchen, an official who learned the method in Fujian and brought it home; a 1916 agriculture magazine credits Hu Yuanlong instead. The date is firm; the founder is legend. One name worth knowing: congou, the old trade word for Chinese black tea, is gongfu — skill — the same word as kung fu, and the same word as the gongfu tea practice.

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