The
name Keeemun comes from Qimen county in southern Anhui province,
where almost all the mountains are covered with tea bushes. It is a
variety of black tea, and since all black tea is known as red tea in
Chinese, the Chinese name is Qihong. For taste Keenum is considered
matchless, a flavor that almost sings. Its fragrance, known
throughout the tea trade as the "Keemun aroma," has been compared to
that of the orchid or rose.
Qimen county produced only green tea until the 1880s. It owes the
change to a young civil official who lost his position when his
superior fell into disgrace. Then he remembered his father's advice,
which he had disregarded in his pride at passing the exam and
becoming an official: a skill is a better guarantor of a living than
precarious officialdom.
The
young man went to Fujian and learned the black tea process. On his
return he set up three factories using the new technique on the same
leaves his neighbors were making into green tea. The method was
perfectly suited to the leaves, produced by the loose, easily
drained soil and the area's warm, moist climate. His first product
in 1875, fine, dark-green strips with a distinctive flavor, hit a
wave of black tea popularity in England. Soon other local factories
switched to black.
Keemun became world renowned and captured the black tea market from
India's Darjeeling. In 1915 Keemun was another Chinese winner at the
Panama Pacific International Exposition. Though in recent years tea
connoisseurs have taken more to broken black, Keemun black has held
its own and remains the "king of red (black) teas."
Keemun is originally one of the congou-type teas. That is, it
requires a great deal of gongfu (disciplined skill) to make into
fine, taut strips without breaking the leaves.
