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  • 🇨🇦🇩🇪🇨🇳张殿李🇨🇳🇩🇪🇨🇦ZDL@pxlfd.ca
    Jun 6, 2026, 3:58 AM
    Today we have 滇红金螺茶 (Diānhóng jīn luó chá, "Dianhong Gold Snail Tea"). This is a tea from 云南省临沧市凤庆县 (Yúnnán Shěng Líncāng Shì Fèngqìng Xiàn, "Yunnan Province, Lincang City, Fengqing County) and it is a justly world famous red (in English black) tea. It is very floral for an oxidized tea, yet it is clearly a red tea. It has all the dark undertones that you'd find in an Assam or the various favourite blends like "English Breakfast" and so on.

    But here is where it gets a little weird. Did you see how I called it "Golden Snail" above? That's a bit weird. Mostly when you buy a Dianhong you get "Golden Needle". So what's the snail about?

    Well, see, golden needle tea is processed into straight, long, rolled leaves. Needle-shaped, as the name would suggest. Golden snail tea is instead rolled into the little curls you see above. Which is surely just cosmetic, right?

    Wrong.

    This is the weird thing about tea. Varietal, terroir, oxidation, processing, *and even shaping*, all have a part to play in the flavour. And more. The golden needle tea is sweet, floral, bright and cheery. The golden snail tea, despite being picked from the same trees (by the same people), and processed in the same factories (by the same people), has that same floral bouquet, but also has a far darker undertone, almost chocolate-like in its deep, round, nutty bitters, making it an entirely different experience.

    This is what I'm sharing today. Details, as usual, in the alt text. As usual Mastodon users will have to click through to see all the pictures.

    #茶 #中国茶 #滇红 #金螺 #红茶

    #Tea #ChineseTea #DianHong #GoldenSnail #BlackTea
    Today's tableau features a blue backdrop cloth, an unfurled bamboo scroll of 孙子兵法 (Sūnzǐ Bīngfǎ, "Sun-Tzu's The Art of War"), and a celadon-coloured calabash-shaped bottle. A piece of torn paper folded two ways to help center the tea piled in its middle covers much of the scroll. A collection of red seals is stamped on the top right for decoration. This first view of the tea shows the tightly curled dark leaves, with visible trademark orange-tipped buds and fine hairs.
    This closeup view of the tea shows the fine structure of the rolled and curled leaves, showing off the complicated coloration of differing degrees of oxidation.
    Another closeup view of the tea, this time after a brief wash, provides a detailed look at the initial process of the leaves' unfurling and brewing. The coloration has spread out to be a bit more evenly distributed, the tight curls have visibly loosened, and the now-damp leaves glisten in the ambient light. At this point, the famed Dianhong floral bouquet fills the immediate vicinity with an almost incense-like scent – familiar to the fortunate who recognize it as a sign of what's to come.
    Now the bulk of the work is being done by the water. A double-walled, lidded glass with a glass basket holding the leaves is filled to the top with the umber liquor—the reason why the Chinese call this tea "red" (in English we describe the leaf as "black"). The leaves have fully unfurled and fill the basket, with plenty of space between them for water to circulate. Under the basket, at the bottom of the glass, the pure liquor is visible against the white paper background which beautifully contrasts the colour of the tea. To the left of the tea is again the celadon-coloured, calabash-shaped bottle.
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