TeaHQ

Qimen

A county in southern Anhui whose black tea, made only from the late nineteenth century onward, became the aromatic backbone of English breakfast blends under the anglicised name Keemun.

祁门China100–600 metres

History on this page: TeaHQ synthesis

TeaHQ's own reading of well-attested general knowledge, with no single source behind it.

This district’s description dates something — a founding, a first planting, a period of expansion. The label above says on what basis, and it applies to the historical statements rather than to the elevation, climate or soil claims below, which carry their own confidence separately.

Elevation

Recorded at 100–600 metres.

How firm this is: Inferred from general knowledge of the district rather than measured or taken from a source that states it.

When it is picked

A spring pick for the finest grades and a long season after it for the rest, in a district whose reputation is built on processing rather than on picking date. Keemun's aromatic character comes from a long, carefully managed oxidation and sorting regime, so the calendar is less of a price signal here than in the green-tea districts nearby.

How firm this is: Inferred from general knowledge of the district rather than measured or taken from a source that states it.

How the name is written

Also transliterated as qimen, qi men, keemun, chimen. Romanisations of a district name vary by system and by vendor, and a packet spelling one way is not describing a different place.

Teas this region is known for

  • Keemun — Softer and more aromatic than an Indian black, with a cocoa-and-pine sweetness rather than malt. It takes a little milk without collapsing, though it is more interesting without.

Other teas recorded from here

Other growing regions in China

The neighbouring districts are the useful comparison: they share a country, a grading convention and often a cultivar, so what differs between them is closer to terroir than anything a cross-border comparison can isolate.

Sources

  • TeaHQ editorial synthesis — TeaHQ

This page is TeaHQ’s own synthesis throughout. No external document stands behind the elevation band, the climate note or the character described above, which is why each carries its confidence in the open.

How TeaHQ handles sources

Written comparisons

Where TeaHQ has set this region against something it is routinely confused with, and argued the differences out in full.

  • Qimen vs Huangshan — Two adjacent parts of southern Anhui producing teas at opposite ends of the processing scale. Qimen makes Keemun, a black tea invented only in the 1870s; Huangshan makes Maofeng, a green tea, from leaf grown in the same hills.
  • Tanyang vs Qimen — Two Chinese black-tea origins that both rose on nineteenth-century export demand and had very different afterlives. Keemun became the backbone of English breakfast blends; Tanyang Gongfu, one of the three historic Fujian gongfu blacks, is barely known outside China.
  • Tongmu Guan vs Qimen — Where black tea was invented and where it became famous, two provinces and two and a half centuries apart. Tongmu is a narrow forested valley inside the Wuyishan reserve; Qimen is a southern Anhui county whose black tea dates only from the late nineteenth century and became the aromatic backbone of English breakfast blends.