January 2026 Tea Subscription
Thank you for coming onboard Parchmen & Co and travel with us to savour our world in a cup!
We aim to bring tea drinkers into the world of extremely fine and exclusive teas. These teas used to be inaccessible to commoners in the past but today we are able to bring it to you via our extensive network of sources directly from tea farms owned by our friends in different countries.
In the month of Jan 2026, we are featuring two wulong teas and a black tea:
- 2025 Autumn Tie Guan Yin dark roasted wulong tea 10g
- 2025 Spring Almond Fragrance Dancong wulong tea 9g
- 2015 Sun Yi Shun An Cha black tea 10g
We begin this month's tea drinking by continuing our study of Tie Guan Yin of south Fujian. A darker roast Tie Guan Yin is made from the light roast with additional roasting. Unlike coffee roasting which focuses on precise timing and temperature, tea roasting is more an art than technical control, relying on tasting over repeated roasts to decide whether to continue or stop roasting. In a way, tea is more forgiving to the roaster and brewer.
For this autumn tea, it is roasted at a higher temperature than the spring harvest. As compared to the spring harvest which are made of leaves that endured a cold winter, the autumn leaves are results of ample sunlight and rain during the prior summer season. At around 125°C for 75-90 mins, the time and temperatures are slightly reduced as the roast nears completion. The intended roast result is a gradual deepening of the brew colour, a clearer and lingering caramel aroma while retaining its floral notes, and a stronger throat resonance. Usually, such profiles start to show in the third roast, shaping up in the fifth roast, leaving the subsequent roasts for finetuning.
In a gongfu style of brewing using our Parchmen Glass Gaiwan, the caramelly note from the darker roast is the perfect base for the elegant magnolia and orchid notes, and these supposedly opposite notes are well harmonised in the brew. There are also notes of vanilla, chocolates and even a hint of umami and rambutan. For a moment, the tea tastes like sugar cane juice, which extends into the afterflavour - sweet and quenching, with a slight bump at the throat when one swallows the tea. With more brews, the aroma fades out but the sweetness remains. As compared with the spring version, this is bolder with a heavier and creamy mouthfeel. The throat resonance is more obvious and stays longer. Drinking plain water after the tea continues to stir up the tea aromatics, alongside a sweet taste.
The three main areas of wulong tea production are Fujian, Guangdong and Taiwan. In Guangdong, the main production area is Chaozhou, which has Fujian province as its immediate neighbour to its east. North of Chaozhou is the Phoenix Mountain range, with the highest peak at 1,500 m. It is so named because the mountain range looks like a wide base diamond shape, resembling a soaring phoenix with its wings extended.
Teas from Phoenix Mountain is now known as Fenghuang Dancong tea, literally Phoenix (Mountain) single bush teas. The biodiversity of the mountains and the micro-regions created by the different spurs of the range have allowed the wild tea trees to crossbreed with other plants, developing differences in physical appearances as well as flavour characteristics. Through selection in the last few decades and supported by the maturity of cloning techniques, cultivars with differentiated aroma types were identified and mother trees were isolated. Cloning was done repeatedly to achieve stability in the cultivar, which formed the spectrum of aroma types in the Phoenix teas we know today. Since the cultivars were all cloned from selected single mother bushes, the term Dancong continue to apply.
Today’s tea is the famous Almond Fragrance, one of 10 famous aroma styles in Dancong teas. The cultivar is Ju Duo Zai, which is Cantonese for a little saw, referring to the finely serrated edges of the leaves like the teeth of a little saw. The aroma type is Chinese almond. It is harvested from 80-year-old trees grown at Guan Mu Shi (官目石) on the spur of Wudong Mountain, at 400 m. Such old trees grown at an elevation will exhibit ‘mountain rhythm' (山韵), experienced as pervasive and persistent aroma both on the nose and in the mouth, with a deep and lingering aftertaste that resonates with the age and terroir of the bushes. The warm environment and high humidity promote the growth of moss on the stems, imparting a moist woody note (丛味) in the tea.
We are brewing the tea using gongfu style in an Authority zisha teapot. With 5g of tea, we are using 90°C water and keeping each steep at 10 sec. Such a brewing method prevents bitterness and astringency, both which are inherent characteristics of Fenghuang Dancong tea cultivars. As compared to a longer steep which presents the full representative profile from the tea in one to two brews, the gongfu style brewing method allows the changing flavour of the tea for up to 10 brews, with sweetness dominating the first brew, strong aromas from the second brew, and fading off to the basic tea flavours towards the end. We enjoy its complex aromas of Chinese almond, brown sugar, sugar cane, honeysuckle and chrysanthemum, harmonised by the round, thick and sweet body. The tea is energetic and vibrant, still retaining its integrity and posture after numerous brews. This is referred to as Cha Qi (tea energy) in Chinese tea.
The last tea this month is a historical black tea. It has several names - An Cha (安茶), Lu An Cha (六安茶), Lu An Basket Tea (六安篮茶), Holy Tea (圣茶). Mainly cultivated around Lu An (六安) area of Anhui province, it takes the name of its production region. Treading back in time 400 years to Ming dynasty, it was famous for its medicinal properties, earning it the title of Holy Tea. Because it sets your health conditions in harmony to a "resting state", it is also called An Cha, with the word An meaning at ease or at rest. The tea is packaged in a bamboo basket, hence its other name of basket tea. (六 is read as lu4 and not liu4 in this context due to a historical pronunciation.)
An Cha was mostly enjoyed by people in the south during the Ming dynasty, and was sold to Guangdong, Hong Kong and even Southeast Asia. During the subsequent Qing dynasty (1644–1911), one An Cha maker called Sun Yi Shun (孙义顺) began gaining prominence for its relentless pursuit of perfection to tea making. This captured the attention of the rich and powerful. Always packaged in a tightly woven bamboo basket, it is highly recognisable and became a symbol of wealth.
A late spring tea, it is harvested 10 days before and after Gu Yu (谷雨), which is usually in the 3rd week of April when a rainy season comes to nourish the earth. Done in steps very similar to green tea processing, it involves an additional step of fermentation during the initial processing steps. The intermediate tea is usually put aside while waiting for the entire season's tea to be made, which is when all the teas will undergo a detailed secondary processing involving blend, secondary drying, steaming to soften the leaf texture for packaging into the bamboo basket lined with palm leaves, followed by roasting with the tea in the basket. This tea is then aged for at least two years before releasing to the market. Repeated steps in drying prepares the tea for aging without risks of mold or rotting, and yet smoothens its flavour for a cleaner and silkier profile.
Another famous tea from the same region is called Lu An Melon Seed (六安瓜片). Made famous by Empress Dowager Ci Yi of Qing Dynasty, it is the only tea in Chinese history made by excluding buds. The abundance of buds is highly prized in tea as a sign of tenderness and freshness. This, however, imparts green and raw notes which are not welcome by some tea drinkers. Sun Yi Shun makes its Lu An tea in the style of Lu An Melon Seed by excluding buds. 10 years' aging since production in 2015, it is now glossy with natural tea oil.
We are brewing the tea in a Parchmen Glass Gaiwan, with 5g to 120ml of 100°C water for 30 sec. A mildly sweet and smooth profile, with hints of fruits, it bears a golden amber colour which lightens with more brews. We continually brew it for up to eight times until the colour fades, but yet it continues to remain smooth without any astringency even at the eighth brew.
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Enjoy your teas of Jan 2026!
Thank you for coming onboard Parchmen & Co and travel with us to savour our world in a cup!