Lapsang Souchong is not for everyone. That’s not a warning—it’s a description. It’s a smoked tea, deliberately and thoroughly smoked over pine fires, and the cup tastes like exactly that: campfire, pine resin, dried wood, with a black tea base underneath. If that sounds good to you, it is. If it sounds like a mistake, it’s probably not your tea. No amount of shorter steeping will make it unsmoked.
Mike’s description from years of autumns: a campfire in a cup. That’s accurate, and it’s also the appeal.
Where It Comes From and How It Got That Way
Lapsang Souchong—Zhengshan Xiao Zhong (正山小种) in Chinese— most oftent comes from the Wuyi Mountains of Fujian Province, the same region that produces Da Hong Pao and the rock oolongs. It’s generally considered the world’s first black tea, with production dating to the 17th century. The smoking itself likely began as practical necessity: the story goes that soldiers passing through disrupted tea production, and the farmers, trying to dry their leaves quickly and salvage the harvest, smoked them over pine fires. The smoked tea turned out to have its own market, particularly in Europe, where it became one of the first Chinese teas to be widely exported.
The name in English is a phonetic mess—“lapsang” comes from the Hokkien pronunciation of Zhengshan (the mountain origin), and “souchong” from xiao zhong, meaning “small cultivar.” It was one of the first Chinese teas to be named in English and the name stuck, even though the romanization makes no particular sense by any consistent standard.
How the Smoking Works
The tea leaves are fully oxidized as a standard black tea first. The smoking happens during the drying stage: the leaves are laid over pine or cypress wood fires, absorbing the smoke directly. The intensity varies by producer—some Lapsangs are lightly smoked with just a whisper of pine, others are smoked to a degree that perfumes the entire room when you open the tin. Ours is fully committed: this is not subtle Lapsang.
A note worth knowing: there’s a growing category of unsmoked Zhengshan Xiao Zhong—the same tea, same cultivar, same Wuyi origin, but dried without smoking. It’s a genuinely excellent tea with stone fruit and pine notes from the terroir itself. It’s not what we carry. We carry the smoked version, which is what most people mean when they say Lapsang Souchong.
What to Do With It
Drink it straight, black, strong. Boiling water, four to five minutes. It handles a long steep without turning bitter—the smoke is the dominant note regardless. Milk works if that’s your habit; it softens the smoke without killing it, similar to how milk interacts with a peaty Scotch.
It’s also one of the better cooking teas. A strong Lapsang brew in a braising liquid for pork or duck adds a smokiness that mimics hours over wood. Tea-smoked eggs are a classic Chinese preparation. The cocktail crowd has discovered it too—steeped into sweet vermouth for a smoky Manhattan-style drink, it works better than you’d expect.
As a food pairing it’s the most versatile tea in the collection for savory: anything you’d pair with a smoked whisky or a campfire works here. In Maine, where we are, that means fall. But it’s really an any-season tea if you’re the kind of person who reaches for smoke.
Where It Fits Alongside the Other Blacks
Lapsang is the outlier in the black tea collection—the one that doesn’t fit on a spectrum from mild to robust because it’s doing something categorically different. Wuyuan Black, Keemun, Yunnan Black: those are teas defined by their terroir and cultivar. Lapsang is defined by the fire. It shares its Fujian mountain origin with the oolongs, but as a drinking experience it has more in common with a Scotch whisky than with Da Hong Pao.
We also carry Russian Caravan, our only blended tea—a mix of Lapsang Souchong, Jade Oolong, and Wuyuan Black. It’s a way into the smoke for people who want the campfire dialed back. If you’re curious about Lapsang but not ready to commit, Russian Caravan is the on-ramp.
