Buy Lao Cong Hong Cha (Red Tea) | Loose Leaf Tea

Lao Cong Hong Cha 老樅紅茶 loose leaf red (black) tea

$54.00

This tea belongs to China’s Red Tea tradition.

Xi Yuan, Wu Yi Shan Spring 2023 - Heirloom old trees

This tea is featured in Red Tea Guided Tastings, an on-demand paid course on Udemy.

Tea Drunk ClassicThe best tea of each vintage.

Lao Cong Hong Cha is a cold-climate red tea from the protected Tong Mu reserve in Wu Yi Shan. Made from mature leaves of local heirloom tea trees, it is woodsy, fruity and silky-sweet, with the apple-skin character associated with red tea from this biodiverse mountain origin. The indigenous heirloom population is Qun Ti Zhong, locally known as Zheng Shan Xiao Zhong.

The Three Pillars · 老樅紅茶

Place · terroir

Tong Mu Protected Nature Reserve, Wu Yi Shan, Fu Jian Province, China. This high, cold and exceptionally biodiverse mountain area is the historic birthplace of red tea and home to local heirloom tea trees.

Plant · cultivar

Indigenous Heirloom, Lao Cong

Craft · type

Red Tea

In the cup

This vintage

Xi Yuan - Spring 2023

Woodsy, fruity, and silky sweet, with a signature apple-skin note — a cold-fermented red tea from old indigenous Wu Yi cultivars.

Woodsy, fruity and silky-sweet, with mature-leaf depth and the distinctive apple-skin note associated with Tong Mu red tea. The liquor is smooth and substantial rather than tip-driven.

The making

Red tea is wilted, then after the stems have lost enough moisture to snap, the wilted leaves are rolled vigorously to break the membranes sufficiently. This prepares the leaves for complete fermentation. Red tea is rolled for the most extended amount of time among all teas, often for over an hour. The rolled leaves are shaken loose and evenly layered into a bamboo basket and then covered with wet clothes to ferment. Greener leaves are picked out in a tedious picking step before baking dry over charcoal ash. Ti Xiang is a baking technique designed to enhance and purify the tea's aroma without altering its original flavor profile. It is usually done at least three weeks after the tea has been baked. It is a tricky step that many opt to skip because, if not done correctly can quickly ruin an otherwise mediocre tea.

How to brew

Brewing instructions for Lao Cong Hong Cha (老樅紅茶)

History & significance

Chi Gan is an unsmoked version of this Red tea. Zheng Shan Xiao Zhong was the tea that Robert Fortune took from the still off-limits-to-foreigners origin of Tong Mu to India and what later became Darjeeling, ending China's monopoly over tea in the late 1800s.

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