All About Tea
Discover all you need to know about tea and it's health benefits
The Chinese origins
For nearly 5.000 years tea has been a source of medicine, meditation, political upheaval and superstition. Legend has it that the origin of tea dates as far back as 2737 B.C. when it was discovered by a Chinese Emperor, when some tealeaves accidentally blew into a pot of boiling water. The Emperor, upon drinking this brew, discovered it to be refreshing and energizing. He immediately gave the command that tea bushes to be planted in the gardens of his palace. This become the origin of brewing fresh tea leaves in hot water and it quickly spread in the region.
In it’s beginnings tea was primarily used as a remedy, due to the health benefits attributed to it. In the early 5th century China's upper class adopted the fashion of presenting packages of tea as highly esteemed gifts and of enjoying drinking tea at social events and in private homes. As the demand for tea rose steadily, Chinese farmers began to cultivate tea rather than harvest leaves from wild trees.
The Japanese Influence
Buddhist monks introduced the ritual drinking of tea into Japan from China in the sixth century. The spread of tea cultivation throughout China and Japan is mostly accredited to the movement of Buddhist priests throughout the region. Tea was immediately embraced by Japanese society and resulted in the creation of the intricate Japanese Tea Ceremony, elevating tea to an art form, known as Cha-no-yu. The best description of this form of art that I could find is by Irish-Greek journalist-historian Lafcadio Hearn, one of the few foreigners ever to be granted Japanese citizenship during this era. He wrote from personal observation, "The Tea ceremony requires years of training and practice to graduate in art…yet the whole of this art, as to its detail, signifies no more than the making and serving of a cup of tea. The supremely important matter is that the act be performed in the most perfect, most polite, most graceful, most charming manner possible”.
The Origin Of The Word "Tea"
The Chinese originally called it “Kia”. Sometimes during the course of the 6th century AD that the name evolved into "Cha". On its arrival in the West it became Té which is still the name for tea in many countries.
Tea in the Western World
While tea was at a high level of development in both Japan and China, information concerning this then unknown beverage began to filter back to Europe. The first European to personally encounter tea and write about it was the Portuguese Jesuit missionary, Father Jasper de Cruz in 1560. The Portuguese developed a trade route by which they shipped their tea to Lisbon, and then Dutch ships transported it to France, Holland, and the Baltic countries. Dutch sailors on the ships encouraged Dutch merchants to enter the tea trade. The Netherlands epitomized the height of fashion in tea serving by 1666 and every well to do home had it’s own exclusive tearoom. The Dutch were the first to add milk to both tea and coffee.
The first samples of tea reached England around 1652. Tea was referred to as the China drink, tcha, chaw, tay, tee, and tea and was at first regarded more as a medicine than a fashionable drink due to it's health benefits. By 1657 tea was being served at Garraway’s coffee house for such cures as cleaning kidneys and “overcoming superfluous sleep”.
By 1833 tea become so popluar and affordable due to it’s large scale importation that tea was no longer reserved for high society England, and by the middle of the eighteenth century had replaced ale as England's national drink.
Tea in the Americas
As tea drinking flourished in England, it also did in the English colonies. By the turn of the eighteenth century, tea was publicly available in colonial Boston, New York, and Philadelphia. England soon placed increasingly higher tariffs on tea as a way to recoup the expense of the French and Indian War. These tea taxes prompted the colonists to take action. On December 16, 1773, a band of some sixty outraged colonists, disguised as Indians, gathered at Griffin's Wharf, boarded the Dartmouth, the Eleanor, and the Beaver, and tossed hundreds of pounds of tea into Boston Harbor. Known as the Boston Tea Party, this event was a marking point for the colonists fight for independence. Following the Revolutionary War, America staked its own claim in the Chinese tea trade, and by the turn of the twentieth century, tea became a source of social congregation.
The United States also has marked the evolution of tea with the invention of teabags and iced tea. Thomas Sullivan of New York developed the concept of "bagged tea". As a tea merchant, he carefully wrapped each sample delivered to restaurants for their consideration. He recognized a natural marketing opportunity when he realized the restaurants were brewing the samples "in the bags" to avoid the mess of tealeaves.
