Black tea

Black tea is a completely fermented tea. The production for Chinese black tea mainly four procedures: Withering, Rolling, Fermenting, and Drying. Chinese black tea is mainly for export business. In 1980s' , black tea as traditional Chinese commodity played the main part in world tea markets. Today, Chinese black tea is still the popular tea in the world. According to different processing methods, Chinese black tea can be detailedly sorted into three types: Souchong black tea, congou black tea and broken black tea.

* Souchong black tea: The unique black tea from Wuyi mountain city, Fujian province. The pine-smoking fragrance of Souchong black tea is much different from any other black teas of the world. According to different producing area, Souchong black tea can be farther classified into the three types:Tongmuguan Souchong, produced in Tongmugaun county; Lapsang Souchong, produced in Chong'An, Jianyang, Guangzhe; XingChun Souchong, produced in other areas which around Xingcun town of Chong'An county; Smoking Souchong, which not from Wuyi mountain city, but other tea producing area. Among them, Lapsang Souchong is the best which offering longan flavor. Smoking souchong is made from low grade congou black tea, processed by imitational method as other Souchong black tea. The smoking fragrance is exactly coming from the burning brushwood of pine plant.

* Congou black tea:Congou black tea is evolved from Souchong black tea. The famous Chinese congou black teas include:Qihong of Anhui (Keemun black), Dianhong of Yunnan, Suhong of Jiangsu, Chuanhong of Sichuan and Huhong of Hunan.

* Broken black tea: Broken black tea is also called "graded black tea" since there is international uniform grading standard for broken black tea. Accoding to the different shapes, broken black tea is classified into four types: whole Leaf black, with short strip shape; broken leaf black, with small grain shape; Fannings black, with small slice shape; Dust black, with powdered shape.

The origin of Chinese black tea is Chong'An, Fujian( the city of Wuyi mountain today). In the last of 18th century, the souchong black tea was firstly created in Wuyi mountain. Following that, the congou black tea was ceated there. The manufacturing techinique of blakc tea was then spreaded to jiangsi province, then to Keemun.