Ask most tea lovers to name a Chinese black tea and they will answer Keemun or perhaps Yunnan Gold; few realize that the very first black tea ever created was Lapsang Souchong, born in the cool, mineral-rich folds of the Wuyi Mountains of northern Fujian. Locals still call it “Zheng Shan Xiao Zhong,” the “small-leaf varietal from the original mountain,” and insist that only leaves picked inside the 60 km² core reserve around Tongmu Pass deserve the unqualified name. Everything else, no matter how fragrant, is an outsider. This article invites you to step beyond the supermarket smoked teabag and meet the tea that bewitched European duchesses in 1662, inspired the Earl Grey blend, and still carries the scent of pine and camphor in its curled, charcoal-black leaves.
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A leaf born from chaos
Legend fixes the birth year at 1646, when Qing troops pressed southward and tea farmers, fleeing the advance, abandoned freshly picked green leaves in the withering sheds. Overnight oxidation turned the leaf edges copper-red; desperate to salvage the crop, the farmers rushed the semi-oxidized leaves over pine fires to dry them quickly for market. The improbable result was a tea that tasted of longan fruit, cinnamon and smoked resin, and it traveled down the Min River to the port of Xiamen where Dutch traders paid a premium for this new “bohea” (Fujian) black tea. By the time Catherine of Braganza brought a chest of it to London as part of her dowry, Lapsang Souchong had already become the fashionable “English” breakfast cup—two centuries before Assam or Ceylon entered the trade. -
Varieties inside the smoke
Today the family has three distinct faces. Traditional Lapsang Souchong is still pine-smoked in three stages: first over embers of local Masson pine in the withering trough, again in the rolling room where hot smoke re-activates enzymes, and finally in the drying basket where the leaf absorbs the deepest tarry notes. A newer “unsmoked” or “craft” version, called Zheng Shan Xiao Zhong, omits the pine step entirely; instead the leaf is withered over gentle charcoal made from bamboo and hardwood, yielding a liquor of honey, lychee and malt that pleases palates frightened by campfire aromas. Between these poles lies a semi-smoked grade that spends only one night in the pine room, balanced enough to satisfy purists yet approachable for newcomers. Finally, there is the rare “wild” picking, harvested from tea trees that seeded themselves on cliff ledges a century ago; the leaves are so small and resinous that they need no smoke at all, yet finish with a whisper of pine that seems to rise from the mountain itself. -
Crafting the ember
The season is brutally short: only six days in late April when the leaf reaches the mythical “one bud three leaves” standard and the mountain air holds 75 % humidity. Pickers climb 800 m before dawn, filling wicker baskets lined with fresh fern to keep the buds cool. Back at the cottage, the leaves are spread 3 cm deep on bamboo screens suspended over a shallow trench of glowing pine logs; the temperature must hover at 28 °C so that moisture leaves the leaf slowly, carrying with it grassy volatiles and making room for smoke. Every twenty minutes the tea master lifts a handful to his cheek, testing for the limp, velvet feel that signals the end of withering. Rolling follows, but unlike orthodox CTC methods, the goal is to bruise rather than shred; the cell walls must break just enough to release polyphenol oxidase without exposing the bitter central vein. Oxidation happens in cedar-lined boxes where the leaf sits 4 cm deep, covered by wet cotton cloths; the tea master listens rather than watches, waiting for the rustle to soften into the hush of completed fermentation. The final drying is the most theatrical moment: the leaf is poured into rattan sieves that slide into brick ovens whose floors are lined with fresh pine resin. A single teaspoon of raw camphor wood is tossed onto the coals, releasing a blue aromatic cloud that seals the tea’s signature note. -
Brewing the mountain
Western guides often recommend boiling water and five-minute infusions, but such treatment scorches the delicate oils. Instead, treat Lapsang Souchong like a Burgundy Pinot: respect its terroir. Use 4 g of leaf (about two heaping teaspoons) in a 200 ml porcelain gaiwan pre-warmed to 85 °C. Rinse for three seconds to wake the leaf, discard, then steep 8 s, 12 s, 18 s, 30 s, 60 s, adding five seconds for each subsequent pour. The first liquor glows amber with a rose-gold rim and smells of dried longan and pine sap; the second deepens to mahogany, introducing cocoa and a faint peppery bite; by the third, the smoke recedes like morning mist, leaving a lingering sweetness the Chinese call huigan, “returning sweetness.” If you must add milk, choose the unsmoked craft style; dairy fat binds to guaiacol molecules and turns the traditional smoked version acrid. -
Tasting the invisible
Professional cuppers evaluate Lapsang Souchong on five axes: smoke, fruit, malt, mineral and cooling. Prepare three identical cups, cover them, then lift the lids simultaneously. The highest-grade tea will show no sharp tar note; instead you should detect a scent reminiscent of lapsang-infused pipe tobacco and candied orange peel. Slurp loudly, aerating the liquor across the palate; a cooling sensation at the back of the throat indicates the presence of camphor-rich terpenes extracted from the pine. Finally, inspect the wet leaf: it should be chocolate brown with bronze edges, whole and elastic; if it crumbles or smells of burnt rubber, the smoker used resinous green pine instead of aged heartwood. -
Food affinities
The traditional smoked style loves fat and salt. In Fujian, fishermen brew it strong and use the liquor to poach shrimp, the smoke echoing the char of open-fire cooking. In Britain, tea-smoked Lapsang pairs famously with kippers, the double smoke creating a layered umami. The unsmoked craft version, by contrast, behaves like a first-flush Darjeeling: serve it with fresh goat cheese or a lemon-dressed arugula salad and watch the honeyed notes bloom. -
Storing a memory
Because the leaf still breathes, never seal it in airtight glass; instead wrap it in unbleached cotton, then place inside a tin lined with bamboo charcoal. Store away from coffee, spices and direct light. Properly kept, a 2023 Tongmu Lapsang will evolve for a decade, the smoke softening into notes of sandalwood and dried plum, a liquid time capsule of the Wuyi night when pine logs crackled under the moon. -
Beyond the cup
Today the ancient smokehouses of Tongmu are a UNESCO World Heritage buffer zone; only 220 families retain the right to produce authentic Zheng Shan Xiao Zhong under strict quota. Each kilo leaves the mountain with a laser-coded tag that traces the garden row, picker, date and even the pine lot used for smoking. When you buy a certified cake, you are not merely purchasing tea—you are subsidizing a living cultural landscape of fir forests, stone-paved tea horse roads and butterfly-bright meadows that might otherwise vanish under tourist hotels.
So the next time you lift a cup of Lapsang Souchong, listen for the echo of fleeing farmers, clattering Dutch hulls and London drawing rooms where the first tea craze began. In that curl of fragrant smoke you hold four centuries of history, geography and human ingenuity—an entire mountain distilled into a single sip.