If you have ever walked the narrow mountain roads of Anhua county in midsummer, you have probably met the scent before you saw th...

Long before English breakfast tables knew the word “black tea,” caravans loaded with dark, leathery leaves left the granite gorge...

Long before Assam, Ceylon, or Earl Grey entered the global lexicon, the cliffs of northern Fujian echoed with the crackle of pine...

When European tea lovers first spoke of “black tea” in the seventeenth century, the leaves they held were almost certainly Lapsan...

Long before the English added milk and sugar to their “bohea,” before tea clippers raced across oceans, and before Assam or Ceylo...

Liu Bao, literally “Six Forts,” is the quietest celebrity in China’s dark-tea galaxy. While Pu-erh grabs headlines, this Guangxi ...

Tucked into the humid folds of southern China’s Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region, Liupao (literally “six fortresses”) is the leas...

Ask most tea lovers to name China’s oldest black tea and the answer is the same: Lapsang Souchong. Born in the cool, mineral-ric...