Anhui Tea Region: What Makes It China's Most Decorated Province

Anhui is the province that produced China’s most internationally famous black tea and two of its ten most celebrated green teas from the same area of mountains. Keemun black tea was created just south of the Huangshan range in 1875 and was awarded a gold medal at the Panama-Pacific International Exposition in 1915; Huangshan Maofeng and Taiping Houkui grow on the same mountains at higher altitude; Lu’an Guapian comes from further west. What ties them together is geography. Anhui’s tea districts sit between the Huangshan and Jiuhua ranges at 300 to 800 metres, with acid yellow-red soils, heavy cloud cover and a monsoon climate that extends the growing season and slows leaf growth. That combination is why a province that occupies roughly 1.5 percent of China’s land produces more nationally recognised tea names than almost any other.

Where Anhui’s tea areas sit

The Huangshan district is the core. Tea grown here is often marketed with the mountain’s name regardless of which side of the range it came from, and the price premium attached to the mountain name is one of the features buyers need to understand before paying for it.

Keemun black tea: the province’s international reputation

Keemun was created in 1875 by Yu Ganchen, a native of Qimen who had learned black tea manufacture in Chong’an in Fujian –today’s Wuyi Mountains –and returned home to apply the technique to the local qiye cultivar. A second producer, Hu Kailong, began making black tea independently nearby at around the same time, and the two operations established the industry.

The tea found a market quickly. Within decades Keemun was the leading Chinese black tea for export, shipped to more than forty countries and at one point reaching 6 million jin annually, according to Chinese sources. The town of Qimen became known as a tea capital, with merchant houses clustered around the trade. The medal at the Panama-Pacific Exposition in 1915, the designation as a national quality tea in 1982, geographic indication protection in 1995 and intangible cultural heritage status in 2006 mark the milestones traditional accounts list.

What makes Keemun distinctive is its aroma. Qimen produces a fragrance described as simultaneously floral, fruity and honeyed –rose and orchid on top, with a deeper sweet base –and the tea trade has given this character its own name, qimen xiang, Keemun fragrance. It is a property of the local qiye cultivar combined with the slow mountain growth, and it has not been reliably reproduced elsewhere even when the processing method is copied.

Brewed, a quality Keemun shows a bright red liquor with a golden ring at the edge of the cup, which Chinese descriptions treat as a marker of tea pigment content and therefore of quality. Leaf grade runs from gongfu styles with fine, tight strips up to baoding, which uses single buds and shows visible golden hair.

Huangshan Maofeng: the mountain green tea

Maofeng means “fur peak”, a reference to the fine white down on the bud and the pointed shape of the finished leaf. It comes from the Huangshan district at higher elevations and is pan-fired, not baked, producing a leaf that resembles a sparrow’s tongue –curved, slightly pointed, with a yellow-green cast.

The processing detail that gets discussed most is the temperature sequence: a hot pan for the initial kill-green, then a cooler pan for shaping, which lets the leaf curl gradually rather than being fixed into a shape immediately. The result is a tea with a light, fresh, slightly chestnut aroma and comparatively low bitterness.

Lu’an Guapian: the tea with no stem

Guapian is unusual in Chinese tea for being made entirely from mature leaves with the stem and bud removed. Where most premium Chinese green tea is built around the bud and first leaf, Guapian uses the second leaf, which has been allowed to open and grow. The leaf is picked, then the stem and any remaining bud are stripped before firing.

Two steps follow that are specific to this tea: la laopian, pulling the leaf to open it, and chou bazi, drawing out the remaining stems. The finished leaf is flat, dark green and slightly curled –closer in appearance to a seed than to a bud –and the brewed tea is fuller and more savoury than a bud-based green tea, with a sweetness that builds across infusions.

Taiping Houkui: the largest leaf in Chinese tea

Houkui grows in the Houkeng area of Huangshan and is made from a large-leaf cultivar, pressed flat between layers of cloth and then dried. The finished leaf is genuinely large –often five centimetres or more –dark green, with a pattern on the surface that is said to resemble monkey paws, hence the name. Chinese sources describe the picking standard as one bud with two leaves, with the leaf kept intact rather than rolled.

Because the leaf is large and flat, Houkui brews a light, sweet, slightly orchid-scented liquor and can be visually striking in a glass. It is also one of the more counterfeited Anhui teas, since the shape is easy to imitate with inferior leaf.

How Anhui teas are brewed

Keemun is the outlier: it is a black tea and tolerates hotter water, and it is one of the few Chinese black teas that most drinkers prefer without milk. The three green teas all reward cooler water, and Guapian in particular benefits from a slightly hotter brew than a bud-based green tea, because the mature leaf needs more heat to open.

Buying Anhui tea without overpaying

• Check whether the name refers to a place or a style. “Huangshan Maofeng” should mean tea from the Huangshan district; “Maofeng” alone is a shape description used by producers across several provinces.
• For Keemun, ask for the grade. The difference between a gongfu grade and a baoding grade is significant and the price should reflect it.
• Treat Taiping Houkui sceptically if the price seems low. The large flat leaf is easy to imitate and the real product is labour-intensive.
• For Lu’an Guapian, look for intact leaf with no stem. Stem fragments suggest either sloppy processing or a different tea being passed off.
• Ask for the production date on any Anhui green tea. These are spring teas and they fade within a year.

Frequently asked questions

Frequently asked questions