This is a very popular tea for black tea lovers, called Pine Needle because of its shape and colour, which resembles the fallen leaves of pine trees in the mountains of Yunnan.
Most Chinese Teas are the small leaf variety, but Pine Needle is a large leaf black tea. It is grown in Yunnan, where the people love large-leaf tea. They use earthenware to decoct the tea leaves and then brew them in boiling water for a while to get an unusually aromatic tea broth.
The process of making pine needles is very young and is all done by machines imitating manual labour.
The quality of the pine needles produced by the machine is consistent and excellent, with an extremely neat and slender shape and a distinctive caramel aroma when brewed. As it is all made by machine, it is relatively inexpensive. Many people like it as an everyday tea.
I am an avid fan of pine needles and must drink two cups every morning.