Ingredients · Tea
Yunnan Black Tea
Camellia sinensis var. assamica · Theaceae (tea family)
What it’s like, and how to use it
- 212°F / 100°C
- 3 to 4 minutes
- best plain
How to use it
Boiling water, 3 to 4 minutes. Drink it plain — the golden-tip grades lose their character under milk. It is sweet enough that it needs no sugar, and it makes a very good cold brew.
With food
Milk chocolate and cocoa. Roast duck and Peking duck. Honey. Bread crust and pastry. Sweet potato. Dim sum.
With spices
Five-spice. Star anise. Cinnamon. Ginger. Cardamom.
With tea
Usually drunk alone. A companion to pu-erh from the same province.
Its story
Where it comes from
Yunnan province — Dian is the short name for Yunnan, hong is red tea. Yunnan and Sichuan are believed to be the first tea-producing regions in the world, and the Tea Horse Road began at Yiwu and Pu'er in Xishuangbanna. Fengqing County in Lincang is where the story places the first Dian Hong. Our product is titled Ancient Yunnan, 1st Grade, which names no county, garden or tree age.
What happened
The oldest tea country made the newest black tea. Yunnan's black tea began only in the twentieth century, and the story attached to it is a wartime one: in November 1938, with China's eastern tea country overrun by the Japanese invasion, crop scientists were sent from Qimen to Fengqing to build a black-tea export base from the local big-leaf trees, and Dianhong dates from 1939. The tea went out through Hong Kong to earn foreign currency for a country at war. Its older story is the road: for around a thousand years tea went from Yunnan up into Tibet and ponies came back down, a trade running at least to the Song, when the court needed cavalry horses. In 1074 the Song's Sichuan Tea and Horse Agency set the rate at 130 pounds of brick tea for one horse. Porters carried sixty to ninety kilograms of it, often more than their own body weight.
On the shelf with it
Every product it goes into.
-
Yorkshire Harrogate
Regular price From $8.00 CADRegular price
