Talking Tea

Today we're chatting with Zhen Lu and Phil Rushworth of Zhen Tea about a category of tea that's not widely understood outside of China or even within China, and that's heicha, or "dark tea", hailing from outside the pu erh region. You may remember Zhen and Phil from our earlier episode "Lapsang Souchong - Beyond the Smoke", and today we're chatting at the Zhen Tea headquarters in Ottawa, Canada. Now pu erh (at least shu pu erh) is a dark tea, and plenty of people know plenty about pu erh. But the many wonderful non-pu erh dark teas don't enjoy the same celebrity status as pu erh, and those teas are what we're focusing on in this episode. (We're intentionally avoiding the highly controversial issue of whether sheng pu erh is properly called heicha, which could be a topic for an entire episode on its own.) Zhen and Phil carry a varied selection of dark teas, and they chat with us about the sometimes confusing nomenclature of heicha, its somewhat murky history, its regions of origin and terroir, and "wet piling"