What are the reasons for the production of compressed tea?

Compressed tea is created for the convenience of long-distance transportation and long-term storage. The tea is compressed and dried into square bricks or blocks. To prevent spoilage during transit, compressed tea is typically made from black tea or dark tea. It has traditionally been sold to Mongolian and Tibetan regions, where herders consume large amounts of tea daily due to their meat-heavy diet but prefer portable forms due to their nomadic lifestyle.

Historical development of compressed tea

Selecting tea is not an easy task. To obtain good tea, one needs extensive knowledge, including the grading standards, prices, market trends, and methods for evaluating and inspecting various types of tea. The quality of tea is mainly assessed by its color, aroma, taste, and appearance. However, for ordinary tea drinkers, judging tea quality often relies only on observing the dry leaves' shape and color and smelling their dry fragrance, making it more challenging to determine the tea's quality.

The steaming and pressing methods used in compressed tea processing are similar to those of ancient Chinese steamed cake tea.

Compressed tea has a long production history. Around the 11th century, tea merchants in Sichuan began steaming and pressing green tea into cakes for sale in northwestern regions. By the late 19th century, Hunan's dark brick tea and Hubei's green brick tea emerged. The unique qualities of compressed tea include its strong digestive benefits, adaptability to the special brewing methods of ethnic minorities, and excellent moisture resistance, which facilitates transportation and storage. In the past, tea-producing areas often had poor transportation infrastructure, and tea was transported by shoulder poles or horse caravans. During long journeys, the tea easily absorbed moisture. However, compressed tea, being tightly pressed and compact, offers better moisture resistance, making it suitable for transport and storage. Additionally, some compressed teas develop a richer and mellower flavor over time due to the effects of moisture and humidity during storage.

Thus, even today, compressed teas made from various types of tea leaves are not only daily essentials for ethnic minorities in China, with high demand, but also maintain a certain level of sales in the international market.