black tea

Black Teas. Familiar classics.

Black tea is the most familiar tea type to North Americans and Europeans. This is the stuff the famous Earl Grey, English Breakfast and Orange Pekoe are made of. Black teas less familiar to the Western world also abound, including our smoky but seductive Lapsang Souchong.

Black tea is the most intensively processed type of tea. The leaves are allowed to fully oxidize (creating their black color) before they are dried, giving black tea more complexity, more astringency and fewer vegetal overtones than one typically finds in other tea types. Astringency is the dry mouthfeel left by tannins in tea that may also be familiar to drinkers of a fine cabernet sauvignon. It is this astringency of black tea that pairs so nicely with dairy and sweetener, and achieving the right balance of astringency is one of the leading indicators of quality.

While the name refers to the color of the leaves, the liquor produced from brewing is generally reddish-orange-brown in color. Good black tea can usually be steeped hotter, longer and stronger than other tea types, which is one reason that black tea usually contains the most caffeine per cup.

At Tea Forte, black tea blends abound. Some straight and pure from the cupping. Others blended with subtle hints of blackberry, vanilla and even pomegranate. While black teas have also been grown in far flung regions like Turkey, Russia, Azerbaijan, Kenya and Indonesia, our tea comes from the leading tea producing nations of China, India and Sri Lanka.