Licorice & Sloe Company

LET'S TALK ABOUT LAPSANG SOUCHONG

If you've never tasted, or even smelled Lapsang Souchong... it's not exactly what you might first think of when someone asks you if you'd like some tea. Lapsang Souchong tastes and smells like a pine wood fire. The first thing that comes to mind when smelling or sipping this tea for the first time is, "What the hell were they thinking?"

Actually... they probably weren't thinking about making that specific product... as the story goes; and these stories are often exaggerated truths and/or complete myths, but this one appears to have some validity; they were somewhat in a rush and had to come up with a solution to salvage this tea from "going off" (a term sometimes used in the tea industry when a tea goes bad).

Here's our version of the story, we make no apologies for any inaccuracies:

About 400 years ago in the late Ming or early Qing Dynasty in the Wuyi Mountains a family of tea producers were making their standard green tea when an army team passed by and decided to sleep in the factory for the evening... making beds of the freshly plucked tea leaves. When they left in the morning the family noticed that the leaves were very different than how they would normally appear. The leaves were soft and reddish purple. Wanting to salvage these leaves the family decided to dry them out quickly over pine wood fires. The family knew these leaves would never sell to the common market where they normally sold their tea and so they went to a different tea market and sold it for what ever they could get for it. The following year the tea was ordered by many who had tasted it the previous spring and from that point on the family made that their specialty product.

In Chinese, Lapsang Souchong is actually Zhengshan Xiaozhong. Lapsang or Zhengshan is a reference to the Wuyi Mountains and especially when used in reference to tea suggests that the leaf truly comes from high on the mountain. Xiaozhong or Souchong is a reference to a sub-variety leaf. Two different sources we have access to contradict each other, one suggesting it means smaller, the other suggesting it means larger, the implication in both cases perhaps being that the leaf shouldn't be used for high quality tea production, making this tea leaf perfect for treating in an unusual manner... such as drying over pine wood fires.

Another source suggests that Lapsang Souchong is the original black tea and was perhaps a source of inspiration for others to try drying out the tea. We can't validate that claim, but it sure sounds neat.