Anhui Lu'an Guapian

Lu'an Guapian is a charcoal-baked green tea from Anhui made only from single leaves. This version is brewed small and strong, in a 150 to 180 ml cup with 3 to 4 g of leaf at 85°C, and tastes of toasted nut, chestnut and a sweet vegetal note.

Origin & Story

Guapian is a tea with three fires. After the leaves are pan-fired, they are baked over charcoal in stages. A first rough fire drives off most of the moisture, a gentler second fire keeps drying the leaf and begins to build aroma, and a last, brief, very hot roast finishes it. That final blast of heat caramelizes some of the leaf's natural sugars and gives the tea its toasty, chestnut-like fragrance, which Chinese tea writers call huo gong, the skill of the fire.

The leaf that goes into the fire is a single mature leaf, with the bud passed over and the stem removed. It is picked around Grain Rain in late April and ends up as a flat, oval blade, which is why Guapian contains no stems. No other famous Chinese tea is made this way: it is the one made of pure leaf, with no buds and no petioles.

In the cup you get toasted nut, a green vegetal freshness and chestnut. Guapian can take slightly hotter water than many delicate Chinese green teas, from 80 to 85°C, and a glass or porcelain vessel shows the leaves off well.

This page is written for a small cup of 150 to 180 ml: 3 to 4 g of leaf per 150 ml of water at 85°C, steeped for two to three minutes in a glass or porcelain cup or a gaiwan. The leaves give three or four infusions.

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