Intent & Place: Monkey King Green & Bai Lin Black; Flights of Fancy... (Black Teas)

With no trips in sight, a stroll through the Chinese garden (at left) at The Huntington Library last weekend was a brief substitute.

At a local wholesale tea market (below) in Anhui, we saw neat and beautifully layered leaves as growers proudly displayed this unique Green.

This striking Green tea is a clear example of the intent that drives the processing. The long elegant flat leaf sparks an immediate grasp and appreciation of the labor expended. Its visual appeal accounts in large part, I think, for its popularity in the domestic market and abroad.

Here is the cultivar, along with a sign indicating its use for making Monkey King Green.

The care with which each budset is placed onto a screen, one by one, and the care in pressing without breakage demonstrate a focus on a visually stunning end product.

I highlight this Green because it stands in such sharp contrast to teas that are far less showy. The most extravagant Black teas have only gold or silver tips to announce that they are special.  Black spiral shaped teas were probably inspired by the big name of Pi Lo Chun Green. For the Bai Lin Black tea described below, what leaves an imprint are place (including history) as well as craft. The wiry, stylish gold-tipped Black is worthy of appreciation, but this appearance was not the driving force in its manufacture.

We see here two quite different approaches to processing and differences as to what the tea crafters have in mind as they ply their skills.

Fuding in Fujian is usually associated with White teas. At an earlier time and for a long period, however, the region was known for Black teas: Bai Lin GongFu, Tanyang (aka Panyang) GongFu, and Zhenghe GongFu.  Ranked at the top of this trio was Bai Lin Black, and there is a substantial tea cultural heritage borne by these Black teas.

Bai Lin Black has been on and off my sourcing radar for a while. I’d seen samples that did not live up to expectations, and this spring, a more earnest effort paid off. The most prominent take away from this tea is the caramel or toffee note, very evident from the first sip. From there, I picked up fresh fruit, especially orange peel. In a professional cupping, this is a tea that one would want to finish, the first few sips and slurps not quite enough. Cooled to room temperature, the caramel character is still at the forefront. This is a bright, very approachable tea where comments about structure, tannins and such may seem totally beside the point.

If a certain single origin wine or coffee can bring a moment of delight in discovery, Bai Lin Black belongs in this category, a delicious expression of place and processing culture combined.

There are historical records of tea planting in Fuding since the Tang Dynasty, and Gong-Fu tea making is traced back to the Qing Dynasty.

Traditionally, Fuding Black teas were processed by hand by private farmers and then sold to tea merchants for refined or secondary finishing. Picking, withering, kneading (alternating light and heavy pressure), separating, oxidation, and baking are the standard steps. The special attention going into making Bai LIn is selecting early and tender fresh leaf material, otherwise the Fuding “Da Bai” bud/leaves will be too large, and the finished product will have an uneven and rough shape, resulting in a thin tasting cup.

The first round of drying is done at a temperature between 100 to 120° C, bringing down moisture in the leaves to about 20%. The next baking step uses a lower temperature between 85 – 95° C to dry the leaves fully. The “low, slow fire” method is constantly monitored to bring out the aroma. In the better grades, the finished leaves are uniform, slender, and show a good amount of the prized “yellow” touches.

But enough about place and skilled crafting. The decisive factor rests on flavor, and the tea’s bright natural sweetness is almost startling, knowing contextually that this is a one ingredient beverage. Its very name, Bai Lin GongFu Black, signals that this is a good candidate for using gongfu sets – – if one has the time. The dynamic bloom of the tea from cup to cup will be memorable, down to the last cooled sip.

When I first visited the Black tea area in Fujian in the late 1990s, the equipment in the tea factories appeared outdated and mostly inactive. There was an air that the heyday (in the 1950s & 60s in modern times) for this group of teas had passed. Bustling activity was to be found in factories processing Jasmine, Oolong, and White teas.  I wondered if the managers who guided us had erred somehow in their career path, their missteps leaving them in this backwater while their counterparts who oversaw Jasmine and Oolong production were happy to entertain foreign guests quite lavishly.

So the resurgence of Black teas in recent years brings us a taste, literally, of the energy that once drove the trade and newer flavors. Although not from Fujian, Black teas such as Fuliang Black, Gold Silk, Gold Spiral, YingDe #9, and Golden Peony Black signify unexpected variety to be found in this revival. These may not be as lavish as the Tai Ping Hou Kui Green, but these Black teas offer extravagance in another rewarding sense.

Flights of Fancy…Black Teas

Much of the valuable cargo loaded onto clippers that raced from China to western Europe centuries ago held Black teas. As I wrote last year in a post about Keemuns, part of the growing tea trade was inspired by teas from South Asia going to Europe. Later, there came a time in the mid-20th century when specialty Black teas in China receded in the export sector. The Black category mostly meant commodity teas.

Now as more China Black teas come on the market, it’s a good time to consider how one might bring all of them together.  How might one construct a framework to organize these disparate Black teas? I confess that our own recent diverse imports were driving this notion. I outline here a plan of what a tasting journey might look like.

A starting point would be a China OP. The leaves are fairly standard (even, short, straight, and uniform) and the cup is markedly different from a Ceylon Black or an Assam. The China OP has a softer finish, without the brisk, livelier end notes of a Ceylon OP, and is not as dark and deep as an Assam.  An interested, curious tea novice would do well in comparing these three.

The 2nd and 3rd groups in this flight should be Keemun and Yunnan.

Keemun and Yunnan Blacks make for a quick study in contrasts because these two are so distinctive, easily making lasting imprints in one’s palate memory. The leaf styles offer a good lesson too: how the Keemun “brokens” came about, and so different from the large leaf Yunnan Black with gold tips.

Organic (Yunnan) bushes tend to be less robust and the bushes do not grow as densely as conventional ones.

Keemun and Yunnan are straightforward and pure Blacks, and each is an embodiment of place.

Shown above is a Fancy Golden Monkey Black, a signature tea that earned its own category at recent North American tea competitions.

The gold that contrasts so attractively among the dark leaves is evidence of exacting picking, of high quality, tippy sproutings. We’d be moving into another price range here because of the pluck quality. These are richer, more fully flavored and fuller bodied than Keemuns. They offer more layered complexity than a China OP. This is a heady group with deep, concentrated notes, sometimes of cocoa and malt with a sweet ending that Assams lack.

And then perhaps counter intuitively, these bold gold-tip teas set the stage for more nuanced China Blacks. Experienced in this sequence, the contrast between the last group and the next will be more in evidence. 

The following Black teas have in common a softer profile. They are refined, well balanced cups, and while they do not offer the immediate punch of, say, a Yunnan, these are teas that invite a slower savoring and even wonderment or contemplation about how such a tea came to be. The Bai Lin would belong here.

Fulian Black: I have written about this before, and am pleased to have it again this year. The producer tells me ours was their first, and to date the only, shipment to the U.S. this season.

Sichuan Congou: Yibin in Sichuan is a tea center in that province, one with a strong history of tea production. My most vivid memory from a visit some dozen years ago is meeting members of the tea studies department at the agricultural university in Yibin. Developed in the 1950s, this Congou (gongfu) tea was a rising star in this category. As befits its name, brewing this Black with a small gongfu pot is sometimes recommended.

YingDe #9 Black: Developed in the 1950s in Guangdong, YingDe is an important historical and cultural center in the province. Tea researchers who had worked on Black teas finally found their ninth attempt at a varietal to be successful, hence the name YingDe #9.  (Casting a historian’s eye, it seems remarkable that tea research was taking place at all, given the events of the period.) Black teas are popular in this southeastern province.  YingDe#9 leaves show just a wisp of gold; they are long with a slight twist, and the overall look is loose and airy rather than dense.

Golden Peony Black: Written up in 2019, this tea illustrates a nice twist on the notion of origin/place. The cultivar is a traditional one for Oolongs in Fujian. We see here the novel result of a cultivar moved to Hunan and then processed as a Black tea, yielding luscious gardenia notes at the finish.

Taken together these teas provide a fresh perspective on China Blacks. There are more refined shadings to be discovered, showing the nuances of each tea’s terroir and history. As the Bai Lin Black illustrates, these are teas for which one may properly proclaim:

1 ingredient, 1 origin, and 1 story. They have the potential to be eye opening, revealing yet another swath of aromas and tastes that the “simple” Camellia sinensis leaf can yield.

The specialty and commodity tea sectors are distinct in the trade, and these Black teas are truly worthy of that “specialty“ designation.

June 24, 2020