Legend has it that tea was discovered by the Chinese Emperor Shen Nung around 2750 BC.  One day, while boiling drinking water, some leaves from an over hanging tree fell into a pot.  The infusion tasted good and was slightly stimulating, so it continued to be a Chinese custom until about 800AD, when it was introduced to Japan.  The Europeans then started growing it in their tropical colonies as a ‘cash-crop’.  Along with China and Japan it is now widely grown in India, Sri Lanka, Africa and Georgia.  It first came to Europe in the 17th century and in its early days it was a highly prized luxury item.  At this time the tea trade was centred in Japan, but when Japan closed its borders to Europeans, China became the principle source of supply.  Indian tea is now favoured over China tea as the preferred drink in Britain and North America.

The Tea bush is an evergreen tropical plant with stiff, pointed, shiny, green leaves.  It grows best in wet, warm climates with at least 2 ft of rain each year.  The bushes are planted in vast tea gardens at heights from 100 metres to 2 km above sea level.  At higher, cooler altitudes tea bushes grow more slowly and produce smaller crops.  As a result the flavour and characteristics of high altitude teas are different from the faster growing bushes on the lower slopes.  Young, soft shoots produce the finest tea and only the top 2 leaves and bud are plucked. Mostly women do this work and a skilful plucker can expect to gather 30 – 35 kg (60 – 77 lbs) of leaves in one day.  During processing this will reduce to only ¼ or ⅓ of the initial weight collected.  (One box of Barry’s Tea is 250gm – or a ¼ of a kg).  An estimated 9,100 million bushes are required to meet the world’s demand for tea.

At first tea was taken primarily as a tonic for the relief of a large number of maladies.  In fact, one Dutch doctor advocated drinking at least 40 cups a day – but he was an employee of the East India Company who had a monopoly on tea trade!  But it really took off in Britain when Catherine of Braganza married Charles II in 1662 and brought a chest of tea as part of her dowry.  It soon became equally popular with the urban and rural working classes, who bought small quantities of the cheapest tea and brewed it weak.  Some of the more popular brands at that time were advertised as being strong enough to endure as many as 3 – 4 changes of water.

Very soon, the government saw how lucrative it would be to tax tea!  It started off at a low tax but soon crept up to 100%!  Housewives used to keep their supplies under lock and key in special tea boxes called caddies.  When this tax expanded to cover tea imports to the colonies, hundreds of Bostonians threw the first shipments of taxed tea into the harbour.  This historical act is known as the Boston Tea Party and it was the very beginning of the American War of Independence.