Chinese teas — a reference guide

China's most celebrated green tea — flat, jade-green leaves pan-fired in a wok to produce a clean, chestnut-sweet liquor.

Tightly spiral-rolled green tea grown among fruit trees on Taihu lakeshore islands, producing a floral, fruity, light-bodied liquor.

A mist-grown green tea from the Yellow Mountains, with ivory-tipped leaves and a soft, orchid-scented, slightly honey-sweet character.

A robust northern green tea with a needle-shaped leaf, grassy aroma, and a noticeably stronger, more full-bodied character than Jiangnan greens.

China's rarest yellow tea — needle buds from a small island on Dongting Lake, wrapped and slowly yellowed to produce a mellow, honey-sweet liquor.

China's most delicate white tea — uncured silver buds covered in white down, producing a pale, sweet, subtly floral liquor with almost no processing.

Fujian's iconic oolong — tightly rolled jade-green pellets that unfurl to reveal a floral, orchid-like fragrance with a creamy, long finish.

The prestige oolong of the Wuyi rock-tea tradition — heavily roasted, mineral, and complex, with a persistent finish sometimes described as 'rock rhyme'.

China's celebrated black tea with a characteristic wine-like, slightly smoky aroma — the so-called 'Burgundy of teas' — produced in Anhui's Qimen County since 1875.

Yunnan's aged and fermented tea compressed into cakes — the only Chinese tea that improves substantially with age, ranging from earthy shou to complex, evolving sheng.