Dark tea · Shaanxi & Hunan
Fu Zhuan
fúzhuān · 茯砖
“Fu brick” — the dark tea grown through with golden flowers. A brick of fermented leaf deliberately cultured with a beneficial fungus, giving a mellow, fungal-sweet cup once carried west along the Silk Road.
- Region
- Jingyang, Shaanxi (and Anhua, Hunan)
- Harvest
- Spring through autumn; brick-pressed and flowered
- Oxidation
- Post-fermented, with golden-flower fungus
- Cultivar
- Broad-leaf dark-tea bushes
In the cup
Mellow earth, dried date and a soft mushroom-and-grain sweetness from the golden flower — smooth, round and warming, with no bitterness.
What it gives
A warming, digestive tea — the golden-flower fungus is traditionally credited with aiding digestion of meat and fat, and the cup sits easy on the stomach.
Fu Zhuan — the fu brick — is the most distinctive of the dark teas, defined not by where its leaf grows but by what grows inside it. The brick is deliberately cultured with a beneficial mould, jīnhuā, the golden flower (Eurotium cristatum), which speckles the pressed leaf with tiny golden spores and gives the tea its mellow, unmistakable character.
The tradition centres on Jingyang in Shaanxi, where dark-tea leaf from Anhua in Hunan was historically pressed and “flowered” before being carried west along the old Silk Road routes. The local dry climate was held to be essential to the flowering; today the fungus is encouraged under controlled warmth and humidity, but the goal is the same — more golden flower means a smoother, sweeter brick.
In the cup
Rinse the leaf first, then brew boiling and short. The liquor is clear amber-brown, the body smooth, the flavour of mellow earth, dried date and a soft mushroom-and-grain sweetness that is the signature of the golden flower. It is warming and easy, a brick to break a little from after a heavy meal.
How to brew
Fu Zhuan
Water
100 °C — full boil
Leaf
6 g per 100 ml
Steep
Rinse, then 15–25 s, many steeps
Vessel
Gaiwan or clay pot
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