Jingyang Fu Zhuan

Jingyang Fu Zhuan is a fu-brick dark tea with a strange distinction: it comes from a county that grows no tea at all. Jingyang in Shaanxi has, for more than six hundred years, taken in dark maocha leaf from elsewhere and pressed and fermented it into brick — a craft tied to the old tea-horse trade, where pressed tea travelled as a near-currency to the northwest.

The brick’s glory is the golden flower, jīnhuā — the fungus Eurotium cristatum, cultured deliberately inside it as fine golden specks. The fungus is what makes a fu brick: it lends the tea its mellow, almost mushroomy sweetness, and a buttery, silky body. The cup is full and oily, chúnhòu — a rich depth with no sharp edges — over dried fruit, nut and warm wood, with a long huígān; older bricks turn toward medicinal, apothecary notes. The makers like to compare the role of the fungus to that of yeast in cognac and champagne.

In the cup

Rinse it first, then brew boiling and short for many steeps, or simmer it gently for a thicker cup. The liquor is orange-red and bright, like young amber, deepening with age. It is a tea for after a heavy meal, or for a long cold afternoon.