According to the legend, in 1646, the locals from the Wuyi Mountains in China finished harvesting their tea gardens when they were alerted of advancing Qing soldiers. To avoid losing the unprocessed harvest, they improvised and dried the tea leaves quickly over large crude, pine-fueled fires and hide them by burying them in sacks. The villagers successfully escaped the soldiers.
Upon returning they found that the buried tea had an intense smokey odour and pungent flavour. Having no other tea to trade (and possessed by an entrepreneurial spirit) the villagers sold it to the Dutch traders insisting that it was “flavoured” tea. Remarkably the tea weathered the journey better than the other tea exports and the Dutch returned later to request more.
