From quantity
Historically, Fu Brick Teawas produced with bigger, older leaves from tea plants growing in Anhua County. While they may have been compressed on further stations of the tea trading routes, the leaves had to come from Anhua County and be processed there. Indeed, the county has long had a reputation for its tea growing environment.
During the middle of the twentieth century, the production of Fu Brick Tea was partially ‘delocalized’ for practical reasons, as leaves from different origins were also used. The emphasis was on meeting market demands and keeping prices low, not so much on tradition and quality.
To a choice of qualities
Of course the production of Fu Brick Tea in Anhua County never stopped. By the turn of the twenty-first century, a few local producers started to experiment with producing higher quality Fu Brick Tea on a smaller scale. They paid closer attention to the quality of the leaves and sometimes played with using younger, smaller grades of leaves.
As these small producers were now processing the same quality of leaves (big or small) they would use for other variations of Anhua Dark Tea, they also payed close attention to the various processing steps. They would especially apply the traditional (for Anhua Dark Tea) short post-fermention of about 48 hours.
A good way to differentiate a high-end artisanal young Fu Brick Tea from a standard big factory one is by the colour of the tea soup. A darker soup in a young Fu Brick Tea is often a sign of a longer post-fermentation, which can be used to hide imperfections of lower quality leaves and creates a more dull, less subtle tea. A similar kind of assessment can be made by observing a Fu Brick Tea’ s required ‘golden flowers‘, where profusion does not necessarily rhyme with quality.