The world of tea is a dizzying kaleidoscope of endless variations, but only a select few rise above the rest to become touchstones of culture and taste. We all know their names: From dependable English Breakfast, to fragrant Earl Grey, or complex Indian Chai, they stand out as icons of taste. And among those giants, rises the rich smoke and resinous perfume of Lapsang Souchong. Where other teas often seek to refine and polish their flavours, Lapsang Souchong accentuates its bold, and elemental nature, a meeting of the primal forces of Earth and Fire. Funny to think then, that Lapsang Souchong is often credited basically to an accident.
The story goes that, in the mid-17 th century, the Ming Dynasty was collapsing in on itself. A group of soldiers from the Imperial army stopped for a night just outside the village of Tongmu in the Wuyi Mountains of Fujian. They seized a tea farm and drove the workers away, making a bed from freshly harvested tea leaves.
The workers returned the next day and tried to salvage the leaves, but they had turned black. They quickly cut down some of the local pine trees and smoked the tea to preserve it, but it was ill-suited to the palates of local drinkers. Thankfully, they managed to sell it to some Dutch merchants, who then sold it to the British. It was an instant hit and British merchants soon travelled to China to place and advance order, offering two to three times the original price. Since then, Lapsang Souchong has been a highly prize blend in the West.
Given how highly regarded Lapsang Souchong is, you’d be forgiven for thinking that its future is secure. Sadly, that isn’t the case and classic Lapsang Souchong is starting to disappear from global tea supply. It’s not that demand has gone down, far from it, but rather that pressures around Tongmu and Wuyi Mountains are making it harder to produce every year.
Lapsang Souchong has been grown by farmers as something of a cash crop since that accident of creation at the end of the Ming Dynasty. It was a lucrative blend for the longest time and the farmers were pretty much guaranteed to sell everything they could produce. However, recent changes in the global tea market have made it much more lucrative for those farmers to switch production to a type of white tea called JinJunMei (Golden Eyebrow). This means that farmers are picking younger leaves, rather than allowing the crop to mature for Lapsang Souchong production. That alone puts downward pressure on the production of our smoky hero, but that’s not the end of it.
Truly authentic Lapsang Souchong is smoked with the wood of the Chinese Red Pinewood (Pinus Massoniana). Sadly, recent years have seen outbreaks of pine wilt disease in the groves of pine trees that supply Tongmu village. Not only that, but an epidemic of nematode worms have further damaged the trees and caused local authorities to ban the importation of this wood from other places in China. The results have been devastating to the local forests and placed these precious trees in a very precarious position.
Some producers have switched to using other species of pine trees, but the complex chemistry of the smoke isn’t a perfect match and sippers around the world are noticing the difference. A large part of this flavour difference come some the terpenes, such as Longifolene, which are either unique among Chinese pines to Pinus Massoniana, or highly concentrated in that species. Even if the pests and diseases threatening the pines of the Wuyi Mountains are eradicated soon, it will take years or even decades for the forests to recover. Not exactly the best news for lovers of Lapsang Souchong.
In slightly better news, researchers in China are currently trying to recreate the magic of the Red Pinewoods through curated blends of base components like rosin, pine gums, and other pine wood species. Hopefully, their efforts will help to bring back that classic flavour that so many of us are missing. It will likely still be more scarce than we have been used to and this will probably affect price, especially for the Tongmu-grown original, but any ray of hope for our beloved smoky brew is welcome.
