Long before English breakfast blends and afternoon tea services, there was Lapsang Souchong—an assertive, smoke-kissed black tea ...

When European tea caravans first reached the bustling ports of Amsterdam and London in the early seventeenth century, the chests ...

Ask most tea lovers to name China’s oldest black tea and they will pause; name Lapsang Souchong and their eyes widen with the rom...

Long before Assam, Ceylon, or Earl Grey entered the global lexicon, the black-tea universe revolved around a tiny village in Chin...

Ask most tea lovers to name a Chinese black tea and they will answer “Keemun” or “Yunnan Gold.” Few realize that the very first b...

Long before English porcelain teacups clinked in London drawing rooms, before the East India Company weighed anchor for Canton, t...

If you ask Chinese tea historians to name the first black tea ever created, they will point north-westward to the rugged Wuyi Mou...

If every tea has a birthplace, then the small village of Tongmu, tucked into the granite cliffs of China’s Wuyi Mountains in nort...

Lapsang Souchong—known in China as Zhengshan Xiaozhong—occupies a singular throne in the pantheon of black teas. It is at once th...

Long before Assam, Ceylon or Earl Grey entered the global lexicon, a small village deep in China’s Wuyi Mountains was already exp...