Discover the World of Tea and Experience the Amazing Value Tea Can Bring to Your Life

Tea is native to the mountainous region where Tibet, India and the nation formerly known as Burma meet, the eastern Himalayan mountain range. The region’s natives ate and drank tea, and over two thousand years ago it was already in use as a medicine and as an aid for concentration. Tea spread with aid from the expansion of Buddhism out of India.

Nobody knows when or where people first began to drink tea. There are many legends, but few verifiable facts. One legend ascribes the discovery of Tea to a legendary Chinese Emperor, Shennong, though there is more than one story as to how he discovered tea. Other legends point to Bodhidharma, who founded Zen Buddhism, or even Gautama Buddha. It is terribly easy to find unsourced claims for the origins of tea in general, tea as a drink and tea in culture spread over thousands of years.

Well before 500BC tea was a normal food component, used as a vegetable. There are records of a Chi prime minister eating eggs and tea. Tea was later produced as a broth and as a medicine. Some believed it was able to cure poisons.

Tea for drinking can be traced back to 1000BC, though the legends do go back to almost 3000BC. By 220BC, tea was praised as allowing better thought. By 59BC, tea was believed to be a normal part of the diet. A book on tea produced around 760AD described tea, its growth, uses, where the best varieties could be found and the use of pressed bricks of tea leaves as a valuable commodity that could be used as currency in places where coins were not trusted.

Approximately 1000AD, tea was being grown on plantations in China. Roughly around this period the process of drying tea leaves for later use to make drinks was popularized. Around 1200-1300AD, tea was popular enough in China that tea festivals were held, and different varieties and preparations of tea were judged for best results. An elaborate set of tea ceremonies was created during the Song dynasty of the era, but died out in China. However, Japanese monks brought this form of tea and tea ceremony to Japan, where it can still be found.

Song era dried tea leaves were also much easier to export. By 1391 the Ming dynasty announced that only loose tea would be accepted as tribute, so dried leaves contained loosely in earthenware vessels became the normal form of tea.

Many believe Marco Polo encountered tea, but it is not in any of his writings. However, a string of European travelers in the mid 16th Century did encounter tea and write of it. Ongoing trade missions brought back word of tea and later even samples, and by 1648 there was a brief fad for tea in Paris. In the 1650s, tea first appeared in England, where it was available in coffee houses.

In the United States, the event in history most associated with tea is the Boston Tea Party, where a force of patriots destroyed East India Company tea rather than let it be sold and taxed in the colony.

In the United States, especially in the Deep South, iced tea is popular. Traditionally, Sweet Tea is a strong, concentrated brew with sugar added while still hot, and poured over ice to dilute and cool the beverage. It is normal to provide a lemon slice as a garnish for those who desire the tart flavor additive. In the modern era, it is possible to find unsweetened tea in restaurants, as well as tea with a variety of fruit additives. Some say that the way to tell when you are no longer in the south is to order sweet tea at a restaurant and they have only unsweetened available, you are no longer in the South, no matter where the Mason-Dixon Line places you.

In 1908, a sea change occurred. An American named Thomas Sullivan began selling tea in small silk bags with a drawstring. It was quickly discovered that one could leave the tea in the bag for boiling, and even reuse the bag with fresh tea. In 1953, Tetley, a subsidiary of Tata Tea Limited, launched the tea bag in Britain and by now it is unusual to find tea brewed in a traditional pot from loose leaves.

Most tea is either made in the cup or machines for commercial production such as restaurants. Purists decry this trend, since the tea used in tea bags is what is left over after the good stuff is used for other purposes and the normal shape, size and paper content of the tea bag can hinder the tea from reaching full flavor. Similarly, instant teas have been popularized in recent decades and are also seen as inferior in quality to the traditional teas. These instants often have flavorings or supplements added, and there are even instants designed especially for use in iced teas.

Tea is a drink made by steeping processed leaves, buds or twigs of the tea bush, or Camellia Sinensis, in hot water over a few minutes. There are four basic types of teas, black tea, oolong tea, green tea and white tea. The so-called herbal teas are simply not tea, possessing no trace of Camellia Sinensis.

The tea bush is an evergreen, preferring slightly acidic soils and at least fifty inches of rain a year. Cultivated plants are kept at waist high for the convenience of the pickers, but the plants have been found to grow far larger if allowed, and can easily reach three meters tall. The top one or two inches of mature plants are harvested, with the buds and leaves called “flushes.” These regrow every seven to ten days during growing seasons. Many of the most prized varieties grow at five thousand foot elevations.

India is the world’s largest exporter of tea, but tea is also grown in China, Indonesia, East Africa, Brazil, Turkey, Vietnam, Japan, Portugal, Mexico, the US, Chile, Argentina and Russia.

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