Imperial Yunnan Fengqing red (black) tea

The Imperial Yunnan Fengqing is a red tea produced in the Fengqing area in Yunnan which has a lot of similarities with another product on our website called Yunnan Fengqing Maofeng. All the two teas have really small leaves harvested at the beginning of spring but this one, in particular, has more buds than the other. These two teas have also another important, but less common to notice, difference in how their leaves were twisted. In this case the we can see that the tea has a more needle-shaped form instead of the twisted leaf of the maofeng which remind the homonym green tea.

Although these differences seem small they command quite an important variation in the flavors of the two teas. For this reason we suggest you to take both the products so you will have the chance to experiment the effects of the differences using your own palate. In this case the infuse shows immediately a sweet malt flavor given by the higher concentration of buds. Then, in the aftertaste, it comes the resulting flavor of the oxidation which, after the sweet beginning, will remind the cocoa scent.

Place of origin

Fengqing – Yunnan, China

Production

After the harvest the leaves wither under the sunlight for a certain period of time depending on the tea master wisdom before going through a bending phase. The leaves are pressed and rolled to mix the vegetal juices in their and so cause the beginning of the oxidation process. In this case the tea leaves are exposed to a progressive increase of temperature during the oxidation phase and, after the leaf has reached its typical dark brown color, the last humidity is dried out. After some days the tea is ready to be consumed.

Preparation

We invite you to brew this tea in the traditional Chinese style (gong fu cha) in order to extract more from your leaves. Following this preparation you could use 5,5 grams of leaves (about 4 teaspoons) in a gaiwan of 100 ml so you can obtains more infusions with different flavors. After a brief rinse of the leaves in a 95°C water you can go with a first infusion of 15 seconds and, after that, at the same water temperature, you can do multiple infusion adding 10 seconds every steeping time (15 – 25 – 35)

These leaves could be steep about 7 times.

To prepare the tea in the western style we suggest 2 grams of leaves (about 1 teaspoons) in a 150 ml cup with 95°C water for a steeping time of one minute and a half.

The tea could be filtered if you want to avoid some little piece of the leaves during the tasting time and also the steeping time we recommend here could be modify on your personal preferences.

We recommend you to store this tea in a dry and cool place avoiding the direct sun light on the leaves.