Dark tea
Also known as Hei Cha, Post-fermented tea
Tea that ferments after it is made. The finished leaves are moistened and piled up, and microbes slowly change them over weeks, months or years. Chinese tea science calls this post-fermentation. The best known are pu-erh from Yunnan and Liu Bao from Guangxi.
Taste
Earthy and woody, changing as it ages
Cultural background
In Chinese, hei cha literally means "black tea". It is not what the West calls black tea – that is red tea, hong cha, in China. Whether raw pu-erh belongs here is debated; see Sheng Pu-erh.
Where to drink it
No places on the map yet.
See also
Sources
For everything above except our personal notes.
- Li et al. (2023): Study on taste quality formation and leaf conducting tissue changes in six types of tea during their manufacturing processes. Food Chemistry: X 18
- Radeva-Ilieva et al. (2025): Green Tea: Current Knowledge and Issues. Foods 14(5)
- Zhang et al. (2016): The Microbiome and Metabolites in Fermented Pu-erh Tea. PLOS ONE 11(6)
- Tea processing – Wikipedia