Dark tea · Anhui
Liu An Hei Cha
六安黑茶
The "basket tea" of Anhui — a dark tea packed into bamboo baskets lined with leaf and aged for years. Smooth and mellow, with dried fruit, nuts and a clean medicinal sweetness once prized as a tonic.
- Region
- Lu'an, Dabie mountains, Anhui — 300–600 m
- Harvest
- Spring leaf; processed, basket-packed and aged
- Oxidation
- Post-fermented (dark tea)
- Cultivar
- Local Dabie mountain bushes
In the cup
Dried fruit and nuts over a smooth, woody mellowness, with a clean betel-leaf freshness and a sweet, lingering finish.
What it gives
A warming, settling cup — aged and post-fermented, gentle on the stomach and traditionally drunk as a digestive tonic.
Liu An Hei Cha — often called An Cha, “basket tea” — is the dark tea of Lu’an in the Dabie mountains of Anhui, and one of the oldest post-fermented teas of eastern China. After the leaf is processed it is steamed and packed tight into small bamboo baskets, lined and topped with bamboo leaf, then aged for years, slowly mellowing and developing its character.
It was historically valued as much as medicine as drink — carried by Chinese communities overseas and kept for years as a settling, restorative tea, which earned it the nickname “holy tea”. A good aged An Cha is smooth, deep and clean.
In the cup
Rinse the leaf first, then brew hot — full boiling for older baskets — with short steeps. The liquor runs deep red-brown, smooth and mellow, with dried fruit, nuts and a clean betel-leaf freshness over a woody sweetness. It is a warming, settling tea that gives many patient rounds.
How to brew
Liu An Hei Cha
Water
95–100 °C
Leaf
6 g per 100 ml
Steep
Rinse, then short steeps, many rounds
Vessel
Gaiwan or clay pot; aged leaf takes boiling
