Gunpowder green tea

Thé vert gunpowder

What it is

Chinese sellers call it zhucha, pearl tea, after the rolled pellets; the English name, the story goes, came from traders who thought the grey-green shot looked like the charge of a musket. Rolling seals the leaf so tightly that it survives the long boil and the pound of sugar of Maghrebi mint tea, which would shred an open-leaf green.

In the kitchen

It is the one green that takes a real boil: simmer with a fistful of fresh spearmint and 60 g sugar per litre, then pour twice from a height to aerate it — the foam is a sign, not decoration.

Goes with

Mint White sugar Pine nut Orange blossom water Lemon Almond

Same species

Assam tea Ceylon tea Da Hong Pao Darjeeling tea Earl Grey Genmaicha

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