The Past and Future of Lapsang Souchong

One rainy afternoon in the UK, a friend of mine came over for a chat. With her she had a green pouch of Chinese tea shipped from London. I brewed up a pot of the dark loose leaf and then as we sat at the dining room table, I tasted something utterly unique - a smokey, pungent tea that reminded me more of an Islay whisky than any delicate Chinese tea I’d had before. At the time, I did not know much about Chinese culture, but I found it bizarre that China would like something so boisterous and bold, when their white teas and greens were so subtle.

Fast forward a few years, and when I first arrived in China, I started talking to locals about tea. I was gifted so much green, white, flower and red tea (their name for black tea). However, no one ever mentioned this popular Chinese tea, Lapsang Souchong. I started to ask around, but most people had no idea what I was talking about; in fact, they said, a tea like that didn’t sound Chinese at all.

Firstly, Lapsang Souchong is not the Chinese name, it’s an anglicisation that no one could understand. Digging a little deeper, I found that in China it’s known as zhengshan xiaozhong and produced almost exclusively for the export market. There are teas from the same plant and same area that are not smoked, and sold in China with the same name, just to confuse matters. Lapsang Souchoung is made in a tiny 50km square-kilometre in the Wuyi Mountains of Fujian province. Some of the best and most expensive teas come from the tea-producing province of Fujian, and to Chinese tea connoisseurs, Wuyi is renowned for Oolong, oxidised teas with complex flavour profiles of baked fruit and dark chocolate. The famous Fujian teas are artisan products that can sell for thousands of pounds per kilo.

A list of great teas in China might include a White Peony white tea of Fujian, a Large Yellow Tea of Anhui, a classic green tea such as the West Lake Dragon Well of Hangzhou or the raw Pu’er red teas of Yunnan such as Lao Ban Zhang. But absent of those lists are Lapsang Souchong. So how did this tea become so famous in the UK, and yet remains a mystery in China?

The Tea Mountains of China - Ruslan Kaptsan

The Origin Story

Some argue that Lapsang Souchong was the first black tea in the world, grown by tea farmers in Northern Fujian during the late Ming Dynasty (around 16th-17th century). But how Lapsang obtained its smokey characteristic was, so the stories goes, a complete accident. During one tea-harvesting season, soldiers marched into the Wuyi village of Tongmu and disrupted the harvest. They took over the tea-processing plant, took the tea from the drying racks and used it as bedding. After they left, the farmers returned to find there was not enough time to air-dry all their tea, as was the normal process, before the market. So instead, they decided to speed up by drying the tea leaves over pinewood fires. The leaves then became dark and smoky and completely unsellable to the domestic market. Somehow the farmers managed to unload the the entire supply to Dutch merchants, who took the tea back to Europe and sold the lot of the tea-loving Brits.

Tea was becoming the drink of the aristocracy in England, and to those who could afford the expensive beverage, it was a sign of sophistication. Black tea was more trusted after a few too many incidents of death from the fake green teas on the market. Lapsang Souchong suited British tea tastes as they drank it with a dash of milk and sugar, mellowing out the smoky brew. But later, as more and more wanted tea, Sri Lanka black teas became far more popular due to quicker trade routes and cheaper prices than Chinese tea. Lapsang Souchong became a niche tea, although still loved by its fans.

Lapsang in 2024

In 2024, Lapsang Souchong is on tea-lover’s minds once again. However, this time, many are complaining that they can no longer find the black tea on the shelves. Many assumed it was supply chain issues, but in a recent Sixth Tone article, they explored things on the China side. Around 2015, another black tea from Tongmu village started to gain popularity. This tea, called Jinjunmei, uses the young buds from the same tree as Lapsang Souchong, these buds are then oxidised and roasted resulting in a sweet, almost flowery black tea. Jinjunmei has become one of the most sought after teas in China, fetching extraordinary prices per kilo for the best producers.

Many tea farmers are turning to Jinjunmei for their income, dropping the smoky variety of Lapsang completely. For the tea farmers of Wuyi, producing Lapsang Souchong is becoming more and more challenging. The smokiness of the tea comes from the Chinese Red Pine trees grown in the area. These are now in short supply due to a life-threatening disease from imported Red Pine that has spread quickly and killed off many of the trees.   Thus, the rarity of Lapsang is pushing prices in the West to above $100 a kilo. Most tea-drinkers in the UK are not willing to pay large sums of money for their daily brew. Tea drinking no longer has the same prestige in the UK as it once did in the 17th century. As the demand drops, farmers are even less likely to continue with the tradition of smoking Lapsang Souchong over pine. The beloved black tea may become a thing of the past.