Lapsang Souchong Smoky Black Tea

Lapsang Souchong is a black tea from Tongmu village in the Wuyi Mountains of Fujian, withered and dried in smokehouses over pinewood fires. The cup is amber and resinous, with pine smoke over a sweet note of dried longan. Brewed in a teapot at 95°C.

Origin & Story

One village, two names

Lapsang Souchong comes from Tongmu, a village high in the Wuyi Mountains of northern Fujian. In Chinese it is Zhengshan Xiaozhong, roughly the small-leaf tea of the true mountain, and in China the name properly belongs to tea from a small area, about 50 square kilometers, inside the nature reserve around the village. It is often called the first black tea, and it is one of the oldest.

The story everyone tells

The usual story is set in the middle of the seventeenth century, as the Ming dynasty fell. Soldiers passed through or camped in Tongmu, the tea makers could not finish their leaf, and when they came back it had darkened. To save it they dried it fast over fires of local pine, and the smoke stayed in the tea. Some versions say the soldiers slept on the leaf and their heat spoiled it; others date the episode to 1646 and the Qing advance. The smoky tea is said to have been sold cheaply to Dutch merchants, who found buyers in Europe and came back for more. None of this is recorded at the time, so take it as the village's account.

The smokehouse

Traditional Lapsang is made in a qinglou, a wooden smokehouse several storeys high. A pinewood fire burns at ground level and the smoke and heat rise through the floors. Fresh leaf is spread on bamboo mats on an upper floor and withers there for several hours while the smoke drifts through. After rolling and oxidation, the tea goes back into the smokehouse to dry over the fire. So the leaf takes in smoke twice, once while it withers and once while it dries.

The wood matters. Makers use Chinese red pine grown around Tongmu, and its resin contains longifolene, a compound that a 2005 study found among the most abundant aroma compounds in the tea.

A tea under pressure

Two things are squeezing the smoked tea. One is the forest. Pine wilt disease, spread by the pinewood nematode, has killed many pines around Tongmu, and in 2020 local authorities banned bringing red pinewood into the village to stop it spreading. Larger factories still had wood stockpiled, but how long the traditional smoking can continue is unclear, and researchers trying to make a substitute from pine gum, turpentine and rosin have not matched the real thing.

The other is taste. In the mid-2000s Tongmu tea makers created Jin Jun Mei, an expensive unsmoked black tea made from buds, and unsmoked Zhengshan Xiaozhong became fashionable in China. One factory manager told Sixth Tone in 2024 that only about 30 percent of his output was still smoked. Much of the Lapsang sold abroad is made elsewhere in China, often smoked harder than Tongmu tea, and some of it is flavored rather than smoked in a qinglou. Under the EU-China agreement on geographical indications, which took effect in March 2021, Lapsang Souchong is among the Chinese names protected in the European Union.

What it tastes like

A good Tongmu Lapsang is smoky but sweet: pine smoke and resin first, then a note that makers compare to dried longan fruit, and a smooth, sweet finish. The liquor is amber. Sellers say that a cup with nothing but smoke behind it is a poor one.

Brewing it

Use water at about 95°C and 3 g of leaf for 240 ml. Two to three minutes keeps the smoke in balance with the fruit; three to four brings it forward. The leaf takes a second steep. If you are new to smoked tea, start with the shorter time.

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