Its season
Dark tea is a winter tea, and it is also the one category with no real season at all.
The contradiction is real, and it comes from how the tea is used.
In the northwest, where Fu Zhuan（茯砖）and brick tea are staples, it is drunk every day of the year.
Those diets are heavy in meat and fat, and the tea is there for that reason rather than the weather.
Outside those regions, dark tea is mostly a cold weather drink.
Pu-erh（普洱）picking runs from March into November, with spring leaf the most valued.
Sheng（生）is pressed soon after picking, and shou（熟）is fermented over several weeks.
Neither needs to be fresh, and both are usually better after a few years.
Aged dark tea is a winter drink by weight, in the same way red tea is.
Simmered or boiled, it is one of the few teas that stays satisfying on a cold day outdoors.
Summer is the weak season, and iced Pu-erh（普洱）is not a convincing answer.
The honest summary is that dark tea ignores the calendar and follows the plate instead.
Why the season fits
Where season matters, it is through body and temperature, and dark tea is at the heaviest end.
That suits cold weather and works against hot weather, as it does for red tea.
The difference is that dark tea is drunk for what it does rather than for how it smells.
The aroma of an aged shou（熟）is earthy and damp, which reads as cellar rather than season.
That makes it less tied to a time of year than a floral green or a fresh oolong.
Function is the real link, since the tea is consumed alongside heavy food.
Heavy food is winter food across most of China, so the tea follows the food.
In pastoral regions where the food does not change, neither does the tea.
Temperature does matter at the margin, since a boiled dark tea is a cold weather preparation.
Serving it at 60 °C in July is not appealing, whatever the leaf is.
This indifference to season is what makes it the most reliable thing in the cupboard.
It is also what makes it the hardest category to write about as a seasonal tea.
Off-season
Dark tea in summer needs less adjustment than most categories, and more than it admits.
Brew it lighter: 5 g in a 200 ml pot rather than 8 in a 120.
Serve it in small cups so it cools a little between pours.
Avoid boiling it, which is a winter method and produces a thick summer cup.
A young sheng（生）is the summer option, since it is lighter and more aromatic.
Brewed at 85 °C and drunk warm, it behaves almost like a green tea.
An aged shou（熟）in July is a harder sell, and cold brewing it does not help.
Cold water will not extract the earthy compounds, so the result is thin rather than refreshing.
Winter is the opposite: 8 g, boiling water, and a simmer if you have the patience.
Butter tea, made with salt and yak butter, is the extreme cold weather version.
It is worth trying once, and it makes the seasonal logic of the category obvious.
For the rest of the year, adjust the dose and leave the leaf alone.
Year-round note
Dark tea is the closest thing to a year round tea, and it still has a shape to the year.
Young sheng（生）covers spring and summer, where its bite and aroma work.
Aged shou（熟）covers autumn and winter, where the earthy weight belongs.
Fu Zhuan（茯砖）and other brick teas cover every month, because they follow the food.
A simmered dark tea is a December preparation, and a steeped one works in April.
Storage is the one thing that must be right, since the tea is meant to change.
Keep it at room temperature, somewhere with some air movement and no strong smells.
Sealed in plastic, it will go stale rather than age.
A cake bought in March will be a different tea in 5 years, and that is the point.
Buy 2 cakes: one to drink now and one to forget about.
The second one is the winter tea you will have in half a decade.
No other category rewards patience in quite this way.