Overview and History:
The village which produces authentic Jin Jun Mei and Lapsang Souchong is called Tong Mu Guan. ‘Guan’ means village, I’m going to omit it for the rest of the article in favor of writing ‘village’. It’s a small village of approximately 2000 residents, the vast majority of whom are tea makers or at least it’s likely they are related to one. Tong Mu Guan is culturally significant to black tea (better known as ‘red tea’ in China) because it is this archetype’s birthplace. Today it exists within a UNESCO world heritage site which is protected by the Chinese government, not necessarily for the sake of tea production, but it’s a nice bonus. For the sake of the rest of the article, I will refer to this ‘red tea’ as a ‘black tea’ because my target audience is more familiar with this term (I would call it a black tea myself).

The following story is somewhat of a legend. A recent book I purchased points out that this story (while it is well known) cannot be proven because documents that support it do not exist.

The Legend pertaining to Black Tea:
Black tea was first created by tea manufacturers trying to make the best of a bad situation. Once upon a time in feudal China farmers from a village called Tong Mu on the border between the warring states of Fujian and Jianxi were harvesting their tea leaves in an ordinary fashion. As this village is in the heartland of the Wu Yi mountains, they could have very well been picking tea to make a dark oolong style, but for the sake of this story, it’s said their goal was to make green tea.

The Fujianese farmers noticed the Jianxi army approaching from the North and decided to return to their homes and wait out any passing trouble. While the army was passing through the area they took a rest at the tea facility. Some soldiers laid on the tea leaves spread out by the farmers, others kicked the leaves around, stepped on them, generally caused grief for the farmers, and eventually left. By the time the farmers could go out and survey the damage created by the Jianxi army, the tea leaves had already become wilted and black. Leaves in this condition are unacceptable to produce a good quality tea. To the farmers, these tea leaves represent a large portion of their annual income; and since they depended on that to sustain themselves they carried out the production of the tea although they were certain they would not receive a good price for it.

In tea production, the final drying of tea leaves is traditionally carried out using the heat from charcoal as there is very little smoke. In this unfortunate situation, the farmers didn’t feel as if they had enough time to get the charcoal prepared. A fire was built using fresh pine branches and the tea leaves were dried over the heat and smoke. When the tea was finished, it was the first of its kind. Dried black leaves which reeked of smoke, totally alien to a pure fresh fragrance which was the original goal. Locally the farmers knew that no one would purchase or enjoy this tea. The farmers sent an envoy with the tea to the port cities of Fujian which would trade with Europe. The envoy pleaded the farmer’s case and was paid an extremely low price for his tea, better than nothing though. Europeans ended up enjoying the tea very much and requested for it to be made for the foreseeable future. This tea was and has continued to be called Lapsang Souchong.

This village in Fujian and its surrounding area began to specialize in the production of black tea and to this day create the very best of which exists (in my opinion). Other important black tea production areas emerged (and are very important today) such as the province of Anhui which produces Keemun tea and the province of Yunnan which produces Dian Hong. At their best, those teas are great, but I would hesitate to call them exceptional — especially compared to what the village of Tong Mu has crafted recently with ‘Jin Jun Mei’.

Due to the opium wars that the British had with China, the British took the knowledge they have gained of tea production from the Chinese and established plantations in India as a way to shift production away from China. Plantations were set up in fertile plains of Assam and the famous terms used today such as ‘Orange Pekoe’ and ‘English Breakfast’ came into being. Once the plantations could manage a stable production and the quality of the tea wasn’t complete garbage, the British bought less and less Chinese tea in favor of their patriotic “British tea”. Tong Mu which by now specialized in black tea production almost exclusively for the British was in a tough situation. China as a whole still enjoyed the light flavors and fragrance of green tea and disliked the bold intense flavors of lapsang souchong. Farmers that still made the smokey Lapsang Souchong could still sell it to the Russians and Americans, others would return to producing oolong or try to make less smokey styles of black tea that would hopefully intrigue the domestic market.

In 1999 UNSECO (the United Nations) created a zone in the Wuyi mountains of Northern Fujian to protect biodiversity and culturally significant archeological sites. Tong Mu village falls within this designated zone and thus must adhere to all the rules and limitations imposed on it. No pesticides, no fertilizers, no tearing up the land to farm, etc. The area is pristine, compare it to Jasper or Lake Louise. It is apparently extremely hard to enter this zone if you are not a resident of a village within it. Knowing this makes the following paragraph a little contradictory though.

In 2005 a couple of tea merchants from Beijing went on a business trip to Tong Mu to visit the factory they purchase their Lapsang Souchong from. As they sat in the afternoon shade and spoke to the president of the factory they saw an elderly woman about to enter the unusually hot sun and work in the field. The 2 merchants felt sympathetic that she has to make a living this way and suggested to the president of the company to pick a higher quality leaf (a younger leaf), thus making a higher quality tea so that they could pay their workers a higher wage. The president humored the 2 merchants and called his employee over. The merchants suggested that the woman picks only the youngest bud and that as it’s a trial they will pay her wage. She did her work for the day and came back with a small quantity of tea. She made good money that day.

The tea was rolled out by hand and left to oxidize before eventually being dried over charcoal. The following day upon tasting the tea everyone noted the quality. It was exceptional, but. As the picking is so incredibly time-consuming and detailed, the price of the tea to make a profit should be extremely high. For a market without much interest in black tea to begin with, and with western markets not willing to pay the high prices for quality tea that the Chinese themselves would pay, the factory would have to, unfortunately, decline to produce such an amazing product. The merchants took on a business partner specializing in marketing and commissioned a few kilograms of tea to be made as gifts for China’s elite influencers (politicians, actors, etc). They started a snowball which came to be what is considered the best black tea in the world — Jin Jun Mei (Those Chinese characters translate literally to Gold, Fine Quality Horse, Eyebrows). It now has a cult-like following and is extremely hard to get good versions outside of China due to the sheer demand for it domestically. There are a lot of fakes out there. Someone with experience looking at the dry tea leaf would probably be able to detect a fake from the size of the dried leaf, the amount of the golden color they see, and ultimately the quality and richness in the flavor.