When I first came into contact with tea earlier, like many tea friends, I thought that Keemun black tea was developed by people with the surname Qi, which was probably influenced by the name "Tangmen".
It was not until I went to Anhui with my second brother later that I learned that Qimen referred to Qimen County in Huangshan City, Anhui Province.
Because it is located in Huangshan Mountain, Keemun was the first to make green tea, after all, Huangshan Maofeng is famous throughout the country. Later, local tea makers used the production process of Min Hong to make a new black tea.
As one of the three major black teas in modern China, Keemun black tea has unique characteristics, today we will talk about Keemun black tea to see what it is special.
First of all, let's first look at the distribution of Keemun black tea: Keemun, Dongzhi, Guichi, Shitai, Yixian, and the Fuliang area of Jiangxi, all of which are the production areas of Keemun black tea.
In particular, the floating beams in Jiangxi have a long history of tea production, and there is a sentence in Bai Juyi's "Pipa Line" of the Tang Dynasty: The former moon floating beams buy tea. It can be seen that the history of local tea making is at least more than a thousand years.
Keemun black tea has 4 unique characteristics in tasting, namely: high aroma, mellow taste, beautiful shape, and colorful color.
Keemun black tea strips are thin and thin, unlike large leaf tea (such as Dianhong) with a large body, the aroma of Qi red dry tea is comfortable and pure, and there will be no miscellaneous taste.
After brewing, the soup is transparent and bright, the aroma is high, and the taste is relatively clear and sweet and mellow, without any miscellaneous taste.
The spring tea picking time of Keemun black tea is around the time of the Qingming Dynasty to before the valley rain every year, and the summer tea picking time of Keemun black tea is from June to August, and it is necessary to pay attention to the climate before and after picking. Rainy weather will affect the quality of tea, every night tea will grow rapidly, the freshness of tea will also be reduced.
In the picking of raw materials, Keemun black tea mostly uses a bud of two leaves or a bud of three leaves of young leaves, through withering, kneading, fermentation, drying and other processes, made of hair tea.
It is then screened, shaped, reviewed and selected, graded and stacked, and then re-fired, and finally blended into the finished product.
Keemun black tea is graded according to appearance and endoplasm, from high to low: ceremonial tea, special tea, special grade, first grade, second grade, third grade, fourth grade, fifth grade, sixth grade, seventh grade.
Keemun black tea has a very famous feature, called "Keemun xiang". Its aroma components are mainly geraniol, linalool and its oxides, benzyl alcohol, benzoic acid, phenylacetaldehyde, 2-hexenal, benzaldehyde, methyl salicylate.
The content of geraniol in Keemun black tea is relatively high, and it is the most important characteristic substance, with aroma characteristics similar to roses.
In addition to the fragrance of roses, Keemun black tea also has tender fragrance, honey, apple, fragrance and other smells, and the overall taste is stable.
As a very popular black tea, the price of Keemun black tea is not very high, but tea friends must polish their eyes when purchasing, listen less to stories, and taste more bubbles, so that they can drink the good and bad, taste the mellow and fragrant.