The pattern
Dark tea divides by technology before it divides by region, and that is the whole pattern.
Yunnan makes raw and ripe pu-erh, Hunan makes the fu brick, and Guangxi makes Liubao.
Three technologies, three flavour families, and the province names are close to incidental.
Raw pu-erh starts green and astringent and moves towards sweetness over years.
Ripe pu-erh is fermented before you buy it, and it is dark and mild from the first brew.
Anhua’s fu brick tastes earthy and slightly sweet, with a fungal note from jin hua（金花）.
Liubao is darker again, with a betel nut and basket character that nothing else in tea has.
Inside Yunnan, regional names run from factory blends up to single mountain cakes.
Those names describe supply chains more than they describe flavours, and the price spread is enormous.
Outside Yunnan the regional variation is smaller, because the technologies themselves are tighter.
Learn the three technologies first and the regions stop being confusing.
Raw and ripe are not regional styles at all, and the same gardens supply both of them.
What drives it
Microbial fermentation comes first, and it is the only driver unique to this category.
Ripe pu-erh goes through wo dui（渥堆）, a controlled piling that runs for weeks.
Anhua’s brick is inoculated with a bloom that grows during a managed humid phase.
Liubao is aged in baskets, and the basket contributes nearly as much as the leaf does.
Leaf type is the second driver, and it is what separates Yunnan from everywhere else.
Yunnan uses broad leaf assamica, which has the material to keep changing over decades.
Hunan and Guangxi use small leaf, which gives a rounder and less dramatic cup.
Climate is the third driver, and it works through the warehouse at least as much as through the garden.
Most growing areas sit above 1,000 m, but the damp heat of a Guangdong store decides far more.
Storage is where this category is settled, and it is not a regional question at all.
Technology, leaf and storage, and in that order.
Learning the map
Learn dark tea as three separate drinks before you learn it as a set of regions.
Start with a factory ripe pu-erh, because it is consistent, cheap, and it tells you what ripe means.
Move on to a factory raw pu-erh and taste what the piling step actually changes.
Then buy a fu brick and a Liubao, and all three technologies are in front of you.
Mountain names should only enter the conversation after that.
Inside Yunnan, learn factory against garden before learning one mountain against another.
Factory tea is blended for consistency, while garden tea varies by year and by maker.
Mountain names are where the pricing is least rational and the fraud is most common.
Bingdao and Yiwu are small areas whose names sell far more tea than those areas produce.
Treat any mountain claim as unverifiable unless you know the maker and the supply chain.
Learn storage last, because it is the hardest part and it decides the most.
A storage note is not automatically a defect, and telling one from dampness takes several sessions.
Tasting across regions
Taste dark tea hot and strong, since the category was built for boiling water.
Use 5 grams in a 100 ml vessel at about 95 °C, and rinse compressed leaf once first.
Steep the opening infusion for 30 seconds and extend as the cake opens up.
Smell the wet leaf before drinking, and reject anything with a damp or cellar note.
Ripe pu-erh should smell clean and earthy, while a spoiled one smells of wet cardboard.
Raw pu-erh will show bitterness early, and the question is whether it turns sweet afterwards.
That turn, rather than the first impression, is what separates a good raw cake from a poor one.
Fu brick and Liubao are heavier and sweeter, and both should read as clean rather than musty.
Run every sample to the 6th infusion, since dark tea is at its most revealing late in the session.
Compare two at a time, because the heavier aromas linger and blur anything larger.
Judge storage before origin every time, and you will rarely be disappointed.
A young raw cake will punish you if you brew it the way you brew a ripe one, so keep them apart.