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The Tea Story

The Tea Story Tea has been drunk around the world for many centuries. The earliest reports place the discovery of tea in China back in around 2737 BC when the then Emperor Shen Nung was meditating under a tree. His servants were boiling up water on a fire when leaves floated down and landed in the water creating a brew. The tree was the tea plant Camellia Sinesis and the Emperor being brave tried the infusion.

From that point on throughout Chinese History the drinking of tea became more popular and people were increasingly aware of the medicinal properties of tea. Eventually Tea was introduced into Japan by travelling Buddhist monks and began to play a central role in Japanese life with the development of the Tea Ceremony.

The earliest reports of tea coming to Europe was via the Dutch traders who in the early seventeenth century first bought shipments into Holland. Initially it was a drink for the rich and was first heard of in London in the 1650's.

From then on the popularity of tea grew rapidly despite tea being taxed extremely heavily. The taxes on tea of course led to a lot of tea smuggling and the coastline of Kent lent itself well to this activity.

Up until the 1830's the East India Company had the monopoly of trade with China and
controlled tea imports. This license was lost in 1834 and the door opened up for other traders and there was a surge in supply. The famous Tea Clippers began to bring tea back in much larger quantities and they would race to London with the first ship to unload gaining the highest prices for there cargo.

Tea became the drink of all in the 20th century and the government intervened to import tea as it was seen as something special that maintained morale in the country especially through the World Wars.

The taxation of tea was eventually abolished in 1964 and a few years later the Tea Bag was introduced from America which has rather transformed the tea drinking habits of the British. At Kent Tea we are trying to maintain the old traditions of importing quality leaf teas, alas not by Clipper these days !

You can view the news film of our story when the BBC news team paid us a visit

Buy Darjeeling Tea Online and CHINA TEA from our English Tea Store

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