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The History of Tea
 From China and India to Japan, there are many amazing tales surrounding the history of tea. What is certain, however, is that the Chinese were the first to discover tea and its properties more than 5,000 years ago.
Japan was the first nation outside of China to adopt tea-drinking as a result of close contact between Chinese and Japanese Buddhist monks.
Tea only arrived in Europe at the start of the seventeeth century when trade began to flourish between Portugal, Holland and England and the Far East.
England, in particular, was at the forefront of the new tea-drinking craze and imported all of its tea directly from China.
 But with the disruption of trade following the Opium wars of the 1840s, England was forced to find other ways to meet the demand for tea.
A chance discovery in India, where the Camellia Sinensis plant was also found, saw the English colony become the world's largest producer of tea.
But as tea became the drink of choice in England, Sri Lanka and then Africa began to produce and export large quantities of tea.
Today there are more than 40 countries that produce an incredible variety of white, green, black and oolong teas in order to meet the still-growing global demand. |
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