Black

Southeast Asia

Vietnamese black teas from ancient wild trees in the northern highlands, grown at elevation from assamica-related material that predates plantation cultivation in the region. Shan Tuyet Black from Da Bac and Ha Giang shows a broad-leafed, often smoky and mineral character with more body and wildness than lowland-grown blacks. These are niche collector teas; they sit outside both the Chinese hong cha canon and the Indian-tradition mold, and the wild-tree provenance gives them a terroir specificity that lowland Vietnamese material lacks.

teabert, the tealytics teapot, keeper of the kettle

Vietnam's highland blacks come from old wild trees, broad-leafed, sometimes smoky and mineral, with a body lowland tea cannot fake. These trees were growing wild on the mountains long before anyone thought of planting tea in tidy rows, and they have shown no interest in the idea since.

Styles in this family

Shan Tuyet Black (Vietnam)

Shan Tuyet (snow mountain) tea comes from old, large-leaf assamica trees growing wild and semi-wild high in the mountains of northern Vietnam, named for the…

Vietnamese Wild Assamica

Vietnamese wild assamica is black tea made from the indigenous, often genuinely feral large-leaf tea trees of northern Vietnam's mountains, the same botanical…

How it's made

The steps overlap in practice; this is a reading order, not a set of separate stages.