W. Kandinsky, Dominant Curve, 1936
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W. Kandinsky, Dominant Curve, 1936
History of Tea |
Version to print |
What is Tea?
China
JapanDuring the next twenty years, in a frantic effort to avoid financial ruin, planters in Ceylon converted their decimated acreage to tea; it was a remarkable effort that involved the wide-scale uprooting and burning of millions of infected coffee bushes. Perhaps the rapid cultivation of tea in Sri Lanka was aided most by the knowledge and experience of their fellow Indian tea planters.
Within the span of a few years, tea processing factories -- most resembling nothing more than shacks constructed from mud and wattle walls and floors -- sprang up across the island of Ceylon. Fresh-picked tea leaves were withered in separate sheds and hand-rolled on long, grooved tables before undergoing fermentation. Inside the factory building, lines of charcoal-burning ovens were situated across the mud floor, and it was over these ovens that the tea leaves were fired or dried.
Although many influential and successful planters were responsible for transforming Ceylon from ruined a coffee-producing region to one famous worldwide for its tea, nearly all of their names have been forgotten except for one -- Thomas Lipton. Already a millionaire grocer by the time he looked into tea prospects in Ceylon in 1888, Lipton decided that the best way to make money in the lucrative European tea market was to eliminate the costly middlemen and develop a direct source for tea. Because the economic effects of the coffee blight were still drastically affecting Ceylon, Lipton naturally chose this island as the inexpensive source for his tea.
Lipton's genius was not in the area of growing tea but rather in the marketing and distribution of the final product, and his tireless capacity to invent and popularize clever slogans and effective advertising campaigns are legendary. It is a testament to Lipton's remarkable force of character and business acumen that his name alone is often included in any popular discussion of Ceylon tea.
Ceylon
The first European to personally encounter tea and write about it was the Portuguese Jesuit Father Jasper de Cruz in 1560. Portugal, with her technologically advanced navy, had been successful in gaining the first right of trade with China. It was as a missionary on that first commercial mission that Father de Cruz had tasted tea four years before.
The Portuguese developed a trade route by which they shipped their tea to Lisbon, and then ships of Dutch East India Company transported it to France, Holland, and the Baltic countries.
Dutch pilots had been preparing for the long voyage to the Far East for quite some time by research, study and practice. Since 1580 several foreign manuals, in which the technique of navigating the oceans was explained in full detail, had been translated into Dutch. Cartographic horizons had also been broadened. Within a period of scarcely ten years the nautical scope of Dutch navigators was improved to perfection and extended to the Mediterranean and the whole area between the Canaries and Russia. The publication of the Itinerario in 1596 added the missing link to the research into itineraries and trade routes to the Indonesian Archipelago. At that time Holland was politically affiliated with Portugal. When this alliance was altered in 1602, Holland, with her excellent navy, entered into full Pacific trade in her own right.
In 1619 Jan Pieterszoon Coen, regarded as the founder of the Dutch colonial empire in the East Indies, established the city of Batavia in Java (now Jakarta, Indonesia) as the headquarters of the company. From Batavia, Dutch influence and activity spread throughout the Malay Archipelago and to China, Japan, India, Iran, and the Cape of Good Hope. During the course of the 60-year war between Spain and the Netherlands (1605-1665), the Dutch company despoiled Portugal, which was united with Spain from 1580 to 1640, of all its East Indian possessions. It supplanted the Portuguese in most of present-day Indonesia and in the Malay Peninsula, Ceylon (now Sri Lanka), the Malabar Coast of India, and Japan. During this period it was also successful in driving English rivals from the Malay Archipelago and the Moluccas. In 1632 the Dutch killed the English factors, or agents, in Amboina, capital of the Dutch Moluccas; for this act the English government later exacted compensation. In 1652 the company established the first European settlement in South Africa on the Cape of Good Hope. At the peak of its power, in 1669, the Dutch company had 40 warships, 150 merchant ships, and 10,000 soldiers.
Between 1602 and 1696 the annual dividends that the company paid were never less than 12 percent and sometimes as high as 63 percent. The charter of the company was renewed every 20 years, in return for financial concessions to the Dutch government. In the 18th century, internal disorders, the growth of British and French power, and the consequences of a harsh policy toward the native inhabitants caused the decline of the Dutch company. It was unable to pay a dividend after 1724 and survived only by exacting levies from native populations. It was powerless to resist a British attack on its possessions in 1780, and in 1795 it was doomed by the ouster of the States General at home by the French-controlled Batavian Republic. In 1798 the republic took over the possessions and debts of the company.
It is related by Dr. Thomas Short, ( A Dissertation on Tea, London, 1730), that on the second voyage of a ship of the Dutch East India Co. to China, the Dutch offered to trade Sage, as a very precious herb, then unknown to the Chinese, at the rate of three pounds of tea for one pound of Sage. The new demand for sage at one time exhausted the supply, but after a while the Orientals had a surfeit of sage-tea, and concluded that Chinese tea was quite good enough for Chinamen. If the European traders had known the virtue of sage-tea for stimulating the growth of human hair, and had given the Orientals the cue, sage leaves might have retained their high value with the Chinese until now.
Because of the success of the Dutch navy in the Pacific, tea became very fashionable in the Dutch capital, the Hague. This was due in part to the high cost of the tea (over $100 per pound) which immediately made it the domain of the wealthy. Slowly, as the amount of tea imported increased, the price fell as the volume of sale expanded. Initially available to the public in apothecaries along with such rare and new spices as ginger and sugar, by 1675 it was available in common food shops throughout Holland.
Dutch inns provided the first restaurant service of tea. Tavern owners would furnish guests with a portable tea set complete with a heating unit. The independent Dutchman would then prepare tea for himself and his friends outside in the tavern's garden.
England
The journey was not easy.
The trip was 11,000 miles long and took over sixteen months to complete.
The average caravan consisted of 200 to 300 camels.
The Tea Road started in Kashgar, a city located just behind the Great Wall, which
separated China from Gobi. Tea arriving from South China was concentrated and
processed here. In Kashgar, representatives from the Russian trading companies
purchased the tea and sent the caravans northward. These slow-moving camel
caravans went in winter and spring from Kalgan through the Gobi desert to Urga,
Mongolia. After a superficial inspection in Urga, caravans continued their
journey to Kyakhta, on the Russian Mongolian border. In Kyakhta, boxes of tea
were inspected, sewed into raw bull hides called tsybics and marked. Bales
containing the expensive black tea were more carefully packed using paper and
foil wrappings to retard mold. Bundles of the paper and foil packed tea were
then placed in bamboo boxes. The tsybics were loaded on carts or sledges and
sent on to Irkutsk. From there tea was sent to European part of Russia to tea trade fairs.
The completion of the Trans-Siberian Railway in 1903 sounded the death knell for the colourful Russian Caravans. As transportation times became dramatically reduced, tea costs were lowered, and its popularity continued to rice.
Travel the Silk Road
Silk Road
Russian Tea Traditions
Georgian TeaPeter Stuyvesant brought the first tea to America to the colonists in the Dutch settlement of New Amsterdam (later re-named New York by the English) in 1650. Settlers here were confirmed tea drinkers. And indeed, on acquiring the colony, the English found that the small settlement consumed more tea at that time then all of England put together.
It was not until 1670 that English colonists in Boston became aware of tea, and it was not publicly available for sale until twenty years later. Tea Gardens were first opened in New York City. The new Gardens were centered around the natural springs, which the city fathers now equipped with pumps to facilitate the "tea craze". The most famous of these "tea springs" was at Roosevelt and Chatham (later Park Row Street).By 1720 tea was a generally accepted staple of trade between the Colony and the Mother country. It was especially a favorite of colonial women, a factor England was to base a major political decision on later. Tea trade was centered in Boston, New York, and Philadelphia, future centers of American rebellion. As tea was heavily taxed, even at this early date, contraband tea was smuggled into the colonies by the independent minded American merchants from ports far away and adopted herbal teas from the Indians. The directors of the then John Company (to merge later with the East India Company) fumed as they saw their profits diminish and they pressured Parliament to take action. It was not long in coming.
The colonists rebelled and openly purchased imported tea, largely Dutch in origin. The John company, already in deep financial trouble saw its profits fall even further. By 1773 the John Company merged with the East India Company for structural stability and pleaded with the Crown for assistance. The new Lord of the Treasury, Lord North, as a response to this pressure, by the Tea Act of 1773 granted to the new Company permission to sell directly to the colonists, by-passing the colonial merchants and pocketing the difference. In plotting this strategy, England was counting on the well known passion among American women for tea to force consumption. It was a major miscalculation. Throughout the colonies, women pledged publicly at meeting and in newspapers not drink English sold tea until their free rights (and those of their merchant husbands) were restored.
The Boston Tea Party The new American ships established sailing records that still stand for speed and distance. John Jacob Astor began his tea trading in 1800. He required a minimum profit on each venture of 50% and often made 100%. Stephen Girard of Philadelphia was known as the "gentle tea merchant". His critical loans to the young (and still weak) American government enabled the nation to re-arm for the War of 1812. The orphanage founded by him still perpetuates his good name. Thomas Perkins was from one of Boston's oldest sailing families. The Chinese trust in him as a gentleman of his word enabled him to conduct enormous transactions half way around the world without a single written contract. His word and his handshake was enough so great was his honor in the eyes of the Chinese. It is to their everlasting credit that none of these men ever paid for tea with opium. America was able to break the English tea monopoly because its ships were faster and it paid in gold.
Louisiana Purchase Exposition).
Trade exhibitors from around the world brought their products to
America's first World's Fair. One such merchant was Richard Blechynden,
a tea plantation owner. Originally, he had planned to give away free
samples of hot tea to fair visitors. But when a heat wave hit, no one
was interested. To save his investment of time and travel, he dumped a
load of ice into the brewed tea and served the first "iced tea". It was
(along with the Egyptian fan dancer) the hit of the Fair.
Four years later, 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 tea leaves in the kitchens.
The Great Atlantic & Pacific Tea CompanyThe Americans were the first to design a new type of clipper. Recognising that the old ships had to carry too much weight, they designed a more streamlined vessel (based on the old Baltimore clippers) capable of carrying greater cargo (providing it was loaded correctly) at a greater speed. The new, faster clipper was born - so called because they were designed to "clip"; or get the last ounce of speed from the wind. The first of these three masted, full-rigged vessels was the 750 ton Rainbow launched in New York in 1845. Every line promised speed - from the sharp, curving stem to the slim, tapering stern, with tall raking masts carrying a huge area of sail. The journey time of the slow East Indian clippers was halved.
Perhaps the most famous clipper ever built was the British clipper
Cutty Sark.
The Cutty Sark was built in 1868 in Dumbarton and only carried tea on just eight occasions.
It is preserved as a museum ship at Greenwich, London. The name comes from the poem
'Tam o' Shanter' by Robert Burns, about a Scottish farmer chased by a young
witch who wore only her 'cutty sark' (= short shift); the ship's figurehead is a
representation of the witch with her arm outstretched to catch the tail of the
horse on which the farmer was escaping.
Each year the tall ships would race from China to the Tea Exchange in London to bring in the first tea for auction. the races between the tea clippers had become a great annual competition. The race began in China where the clippers would leave the Canton River, race down the China Sea, across the Indian Ocean, around the Cape of Good Hope, up the Atlantic, past the Azores and into the English Channel. The clippers would then be towed up the River Thames by tugs and the race would be won by the first ship to hurl ashore its cargo at the docks. The first cargo home fetched as much as an extra sixpence (2.5p) per 1lb (450g) - and gained a cash bonus for Captain and crew. Though beginning half way around the world, the mastery of the crews was such that the great ships often raced up the Thames separated by only by minutes. But by 1871 the newer steamships began to replace these great ships. Tea Clippers were vital to the tea trade until the opening of the Suez Canal in 1869 and were in operation until the end of the 1880's.
Manufacture processAll classes of tea come from the same plant. The different classes of tea (e.g. Black tea, Green tea, Pouchong tea, Oolong tea) are the result of differences in the tea manufacturing process, and not due to different types of tea plants. However, from experience, tea manufacturers have discovered that certain varieties, locations, and seasons tend to produce Camellia Sinesis (tea plants), which produce better qualities of certain classes of tea.
One of the key steps in the tea manufacturing process, that determines the type of tea that is produced, is the degree of fermentation the tea leaves are allowed to undergo. The term fermentation when applied to tea is something of a misnomer, as the term actually refers to how much a tea is allowed to undergo enzymatic oxidation by allowing the freshly picked tea leaves to dry. This enzymatic oxidation process may be stopped by either pan frying or steaming the leaves before they are completely dried out. Teas are generally classified based on the degree of fermentation: a) Non-fermented, b) Semi-fermented, c) Fully-fermented.
White tea is considered among, if not the rarest types of tea available, because of its limited availability. What separates white tea from black, oolong, and green teas is the way it is processed: like green tea, white tea is unfermented and has a light, delicate flavor, but rather than being rolled like green tea, the leaves are plucked and dried for a perhaps "fresher" or more natural state. This happens only a few times a year, from a rare strain of the Chinese tea plant. White tea is produced only in China, primarily in the province of Fukien.
Fine little white hairs cover the leaves, the liquor is clear and almost colorless, caffeine level is low, and some research indicates that white teas have even more (or stronger) health benefits than incredible green teas. Among the rarest of the white teas :
Legend of Bi Luo Chun" page), peach, apricot, and plum trees planted among the tea
bushes contribute to the tea's aroma. Bi Luo Chun is grown on two mountains
located in a lake and a peninsula in China, where the evaporating water keeps
the leaves moist.
Today, monkeys don't bring us these cliff-grown leaves (people do now, plucking the leaves only a few days a year), but one can still understand why people went to such trouble to get the them. Ti Kwan Yin is described as "richly fermented, dark roasted, and incredibly flavorful. Other characteristics of the tea include subtle taste, a strong flowery fragrance, and nutty and caramel undertones.
While flavored teas evolve from these three basic teas, herbal teas contain no true tea leaves. Herbal and "medicinal" teas are created from the flowers, berries, peels, seeds, leaves and roots of many different plants.
Long, thin, wiry leaves which sometimes contain bud leaf; light-or pale-colored liquid. Orange pekoe is simply a size; the term does not indicate flavor or quality.
TeaPots
Camellia Thea
Tea Plant : Camellia japonica
The International Camellia Society
The Tea Shop
In Pursuit of Tea
Holy Mountain
Britannica : Tea
XRefer : Tea
The History of Tea at Stash Tea
A Brief History of Tea
The Tea Council, UK
Tea Concepts
Serendipitea
A different cup of tea : Sri Lanka Perspective
Tao of Tea
Anything about Tea
Adagio Teas
Tea and Sympathy
Rec.food.drink.tea FAQ
NYC Tea resource guide
NewsGroup : rec.food.drink.tea
Tea reviews
Tea related posters from AllPosters.com
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