The Fork in Lapsang Souchong
正山小种 splits into two real branches: 烟小种, smoked, and 无烟种, non-smoked. Most of what's sold under the Lapsang Souchong name today is the non-smoked branch — the smoked version is harder to make well and produced in far smaller quantities every year.
小赤甘, Xiao Chi Gan, sits on the non-smoked side, and for as long as Baoputang has worked with Jiang Yuanfang, it's quietly stayed the shop's best-selling red tea — no marketing push behind it, just a tea people kept coming back for. This lot is early-spring leaf from gardens between 800 and 1,200 meters, the same grading logic as always: before Jin Jun Mei existed, leaf with one bud and one or two leaves was simply called 赤甘 — 赤 for red, 甘 for sweet — and split into 大 (big) and 小 (small) grades depending on how much leaf went in.
It's not the rarer, harder-to-find smoked tea further along in this family's range. It's the one that's been quietly outselling everything else for years, for reasons that have nothing to do with rarity.