Qimen Hongcha

Qimen Hongcha — known the world over as Keemun — is the most celebrated of China’s red teas abroad, the leaf that anchored the classic English breakfast blends and won medals across Europe from the late nineteenth century. It comes from Qimen county near Huangshan in Anhui, a region of green tea that turned to red in the 1870s and quickly mastered it.

The leaf is worked fine: tightly rolled, dark and even, the best grades wiry and tipped. What set Keemun apart for European drinkers is its perfume — the Keemun aroma, Qímén xiāng, an orchid-and-rose floral note over a base of cocoa and malt that no other black tea quite matches. It is refined where many reds are robust.

In the cup

Keemun is versatile. Brew it gongfu, around 90–95 °C and short, for a layered cup of cocoa, dried rose and a faint pine; or Western, three minutes in a pot, for a smooth, malty mug that takes milk kindly if you wish. Either way the body is gentle and the finish clean — a red of finesse rather than force.