Abstract To standardize the tea export market and guarantee the interest of consumers, the adulteration problem in Taiping Houkui tea should be eliminated. In this study, a screening scheme comprising chemometrics and statistical analysis was proposed to estimate the geographical origin of Taiping Houkui tea. A total of 11 metal ions in Taiping Houkui tea were detected by performing a chemometric experiment. The key variables that can be used to identify the geographical origin of Taiping Houkui tea were screened using the least absolute shrinkage and selection operator method (LASSO). The statistical significance of selected key variables was also tested by analysis of variance (ANOVA), which confirmed the effectiveness of the LASSO. The proposed strategy was verified by the experimental testing and has great potential for determining the geographical origin of green tea.