Xiaguan tea factory

Products

Xiaguan Tea Factory is a major producer of compressed pu'erh tea, most notably túochá (沱茶, "knob-shaped Tea") and bĭngchá (饼茶, "Disc Tea"). Aged túochá and bĭngchá, particularly those produced in the 1970s and 1980s, are highly valued by collectors. However, while Xiaguan Tea Factory's productions enjoy popularity today, higher production temperatures for their túochá are prompting some concern over the "ageability" of new Xiaguan tuocha.

Xiaguan produces both raw (生茶 shēngchá) and cooked (熟茶, shúchá) varieties of pu'erh.

Recipes

Like many other pu'erh factories, the factory produces a series of cakes by recipe number. While these cakes have been produced since 1986, numbers began to be included on cake wrappers in 2005. Recipe numbers are usually in the form of four digits, sometimes with an optional initial letter. The first two digits represent the year the recipe was first produced, the third digit the grade of leaves used in the recipe, and the last digit represents the factory ("3" for the Xiaguan Tea Factory). The optional initial letter, usually T, marks the use of tight machine compression. T8613, then would be a recipe from 1986 using first-grade tea made by Xiaguan Factory, compressed by machine.

Bĭngchá grades

Raw: 8603, 8613, 8633, 8653, 8673, and "T" series of these same teas (T8613, etc.)

Cooked: 8663

Túochá grades

Both raw and cooked varieties of túochá are graded thus, except other Xiaguan brand-specific labels such as ("Horseback", "Nan Zhao", etc.):

"FT" (Fei Tai) Productions

Fei Tai company of Taiwan orders a special batch of higher grade Xiaguan products to their specifications. These products are marked with an FT seal, and are regarded as more highly collectable, because their production is limited and of higher quality than normal Xiaguan Tea Factory offerings.

Brands

Xiaguan Tea Factory produces pu'er tea under a number of brands: