The story of LAPSANG SOUCHONG – The first Black Tea ever made

Did you know that some of the greatest discoveries  in history were discovered completely by accident   There's penicillin The microwave Potato chips Choc chip cookies Black tea [Music] To tell the story of lapsang souchong is  to tell the history of black tea itself   as Lapsang souchong was the first black  tea ever made. The process of which like   the great discoveries just mentioned  was apparently discovered completely   by accident. So sometime during the Qing  Dynasty in the Wuyi Mountains of Northern   Fujian China The Villages of Tongmu Village  began to make their green tea for the season.   So pretty much all tea producers were making  green tea at the time. Now one day a regiment of   Qing soldiers was marching towards the village and  they decided to camp out there for a few nights. So the villagers seeing the soldiers approach  were obviously quite scared and decided to flee   the village and hide in the mountains but  before they did that they decided to cover   up all their tea leaves which they had just  recently picked and had out withering because they were making the green tea for  their season and so they covered up the tea   leaves and then they fled to the mountains  and so the soldiers came made camp for a few   nights and used the covered tea leaves as their  bedding and so they were rolling around over   them crushing them you know kind of destroying  them and then after a few nights they left the   village the villagers came back to find that  their entire crop of tea leaves was completely   ruined it had completely oxidized turning  this dark brown reddish color and it also   absorbs a lot of kind of bad smells from  from from the soldiers sleeping on them and so as green tea the leaves were completely  ruined but the villagers didn't want to just throw   away their entire crop for the year because this  was this was basically this was their livelihood   they depended on this to live and so one of  the villagers came up with this idea to dry   the leaves over pinewood smoke in an attempt to  basically mask a lot of those bad smells that   the leaves had absorbed from the soldiers and  so they did this and thus the first black tea   ever – Lapsang Souchong – was born The villagers knew  that they couldn't sell this tea locally because   everyone was expecting green tea and so through  a merchant they managed to get this this entire   crop of tea down to the ports in Southern Fujian  where Dutch Traders discovered it and brought   this tea back to the west and the following year  that same merchant went back to the village to   basically request for more of this new style of  tea and the rest as they say is history [Music] so as well known as lapsang souchong is in the  west if you go to China and ask for a lapsang   souchong tea, chances are most people probably  wouldn't know what you were talking about and   that's because this tea is more commonly known  as zhengshan xiaozhong the name lapsang souchong   is actually derived from the local Fukienese  dialect for this tea – la sang sou chong la sang meaning pinewood and souchong meaning small varietal   so when  converted to Mandarin lapsang souchong becomes Zheng Shan Xiao Zhong and it's not just the  pronunciation that changes the meaning also changes as well Now Xiao Zhong still means small varietal, but Zheng Shan means True Mountain And to make things even more confusing the typical  zhengshan xiaozhong that is served in China or   that you would get in China is an unsmoked black  tea and so this has led a lot of tea lovers to   assume that zhengshan xiaozhong or lapsand souchong, the traditional form is actually an unsmoked style   of black tea but this isn't the case at all the  unsmoked variety of zhengshan xiaozhong or lapsang souchong only really came about like relatively recently around about the 2005  mark and it coincides with the creation of   jin jun mei black tea the original form of which  is a highly prized and super super expensive black   tea also originating from tongmu Village and  so to differentiate between these two styles   of lapsang souchong in Mandarin the Smokey lapsang souchong would be referred to as... Yān xūn Zheng shan xiao zhong And so smoked and unsmoked lapsang souchong we're talking about two different  teas here How different? Well... So what I've been drinking is a unsmoked zhengshan xiaozhong which we call Bamboo Forest   and it's a lighter style of black tea it has a  light kind of maltiness it's definitely sweet   kind of got a sugar cane sweetness as well but  it has a very distinct kind of citrus-like note   which is something that I've noticed with a lot  of teas from Tongmu village I find it very characteristic of a like something  that's very characteristic of a Zhengshan xiaozhong or even a jin jun mei as well is is that kind of  that light refreshing kind of citrus note [Music]   There's a slight chocolatey note in  the aroma and also in the flavor as   well and I find it's that combination  of this kind of chocolatey cacao note   mixed with that citrus note that's  what is characteristic of a zhengshan xiaozhong Overall it's uh it's it's fairly  light and it's quite refreshing   now let's compare this to the Smokey lapsang souchong So this Smokey lapsang souchong that I'm drinking  here and it's also one that we sell was actually   produced in 2013 so it's been aged a fair few  years which means the smokiness whilst it's   still fairly distinct in terms of its aroma and  its flavor it's definitely the first thing that   you notice has dissipated and more of the flavor  of the underlying tea is coming through so the   two the smokiness plus that underlying tea flavor  actually combine fairly well to create this kind of   like to create this fairly interesting  kind of taste experience with this tea definitely what what I'm getting at at  the beginning is is that smokiness that   definitely hits you first that's  quickly followed by this kind of   dried fruit like sweetness you know similar to  like a dried longan kind of flavor then it's   quickly followed by this zingy this kind of zingy  sourness that hits you at the back of the tongue   and you get that dry fruit characteristic plus  that sourness and then that's quickly followed by then you get this malty aftertaste  at the end. So that malty aftertaste   being fairly characteristic of many  Chinese black teas So as you continue to brew this tea the smokiness starts to dissipate and the inherent  tea flavor starts to come out a little bit more so   that sort of dry fruit sweetness followed by  that maltiness starts coming to the forefront   as the smokiness kind of moves more to the background So we've tried a few other you know sort of more commonly available lapsang souchongs out there and I mean definitely not my cup of tea I mean for some of them out there like it would taste like what I would imagine and not that I've ever tried this   but it would taste like what I would imagine if  you you know if you had if you had an ash tray   and you just poured water in it and drank  that water that's what that tea kind of tasted like it just it just tasted burnt tasted like  ash you know it couldn't taste any underlying tea  You know Lapsang souchong typically wasn't  something that that I would find pleasant to drink   This tea however despite you know that sort of distinct presence of smoke uh it's a much   more balanced tea you know it's kind of opened my eyes to what a smoky lapsang souchong can be and should be So the two teas that I've described in this  video are two specific teas that come from   the same producer I don't want to go so far as  to generalize and say that what I've described   here is a hundred percent representative of  all zhengshan xiaozhong or lapsang souchong black teas out there Whether it's smoked or unsmoked Like these are two specific  teas that I've described that would give you a general idea or a feel for you know what the differences are between a smoked and   unsmoked lapsang souchong tea So that's the end of our  video today I hope you enjoyed it if you did   please hit that like button and subscribe to  our Channel if you haven't already Are you a smokey lapsang souchong fan? Or do you prefer the  unsmoked zhengshan xiaozhong as your daily drinker? Let us know in the comments below  and we'll see you guys in the next video bye

Channel: Tea Angle

Views: 6,710

Keywords: Zhenshan xiaozhong, Lapsang souchong, Black tea, Red tea, Chinese tea, Chinese black tea, Tongmu tea

Id: LKYqdpu7Jdc

Length: 10min 36sec (636 seconds)

Published: Sun Nov 27 2022