Camellia Blend Black Tea

Black tea is a fully oxidized tea made from the Camellia sinensis plant. Teas in this category are widely enjoyed around the world for their robust flavors, ranging from bold and malty, to sweet and chocolatey, and even winey and fruity.

Our Camellia Blend is a blend of several Chinese black teas that focuses on a malty, chocolate flavor with notes of honey and sweet potato.

What is Black Tea?

Black tea originated in China in the late Ming Dynasty. Its creation is often attributed to the accidental over-oxidation of some tea leaves. Farmers tried to save the over-oxidized material by drying it over wood fires. The resulting tea was one of the first versions of Lapsang Souchong. 

Black tea then spread to Europe through Dutch and British trading companies, becoming very popular thanks to the tea’s robust flavors and long lasting shelf life.

What is the Camellia Blend?

The Camellia Blend was one of our first projects: to create a signature black tea blend that tastes great by itself and also pairs well with milk and sugar. After months of sampling and taste testing different ratios, we landed on a blend of a few Yunnan black teas. Malty, chocolate body with notes of honeyed yams and light minerality while also relatively low in tannins. 

How to enjoy the Camellia Blend

The Camellia Blend black tea was developed to be a milk tea , but is also quite tasty by itself as a plain tea. When brewed gongfu style, you can expect some upfront sweetness that goes into dark chocolate notes before fading to darker dried fruits in the later steeps.

My preferred way of enjoying this blend is as a milk tea – brewed very strong, chilled, with a splash of half and half, and poured over a scoop of honey boba. Another thing to get more out of the leaves after steeping for milk tea is to add room temperature water to the freshly steeped leaves and place it all in the fridge to chill for a few hours or overnight. Strain the leaves out the next day for a flavorful cold brew. The chilled black tea blend is very tasty with lemon and sugar.

Author’s note: The Camellia Blend black tea holds a special place in my heart as it is the first milk tea we developed. Many of our tea recipes came from this blend as well. The Camellia Blend helped lay the groundwork for many of the drinks of Camellia Rd.

-Darwin Wu, Co-founder of Camellia Rd, CD collector & enjoyer