the fragrant, golden, faintly bitter infusion of roasted Tartary buckwheat kernels from the Liangshan mountains, deeply toasty and rich in rutin, drunk hot across China as a daily health tea
Origin: China (Liangshan, Yi homeland)
From the journey of Buckwheat.
In the high Liangshan ranges of southern Sichuan, the homeland of the Yi people, bitter Tartary buckwheat (kǔqiáo) has been the staple grain for centuries, grown on cold terraced fields where rice and wheat will not. In recent decades its hard, bitter kernels have found a second life far from the mountains. Roasted until golden and steeped in hot water, they yield kǔqiáo chá, Tartary buckwheat tea: a toasty, nutty, faintly bitter brew the colour of pale amber, with none of the leaf tea's caffeine. It owes its modern fame to the rutin and other flavonoids that the bitter buckwheat carries in abundance, long valued in the Yi country and now prized across China and increasingly abroad as a daily wellness drink. The most prized grade comes from the small, dark, whole 'black' Tartary kernels of the high mountains. It is the simplest of preparations and yet a direct taste of one of the world's oldest mountain grains.
Tartary buckwheat tea (sometimes sold as 'soba cha' in its Japanese form) comes in whole-kernel and granular grades; the whole black kernels of the high Liangshan mountains are the most prized and the least bitter. It is naturally caffeine-free and is drunk throughout the day. Keep the kernels airtight and dry; once opened they lose their fragrance within a few months.
Mapping Culinary History
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