The Smoke That Takes Centuries to Get Right
Lapsang Souchong splits into two real categories: smoked and non-smoked. The smoked version is the older of the two, and the harder one to find done properly — pine-smoked over Masson pine specific to Tongmuguan, sorted by quality into three grades: premium, first, and second. This is the premium grade, 老枞 — "old bush" — made from spring leaf picked at 1,500 to 1,800 meters inside the national nature reserve.
The smoking itself is what most people mean when they call Lapsang Souchong "the original black tea" — it's the oldest documented black tea processing method anywhere, predating the unsmoked styles that came later. Done right, the pine smoke doesn't just sit on top of the leaf; it layers in alongside a sweetness tea drinkers compare to 桂圆, dried longan, so the finished cup reads as smoky and sweet at once rather than just smoky.
Closing out this small format-focused series, this bag carries the same Jiang family material and the same six-century technique as the loose-leaf version — proof, maybe, that the tea bag was never really the point. The tea always was.