"We want our tea," demand Marco and Giuseppe, gondolieri, in Gilbert and Sullivan's The Gondoliers. One of the most delightful of the Savoy Operas, it was first performed in London, England in 1889. It was, however, supposedly set over a century earlier, in 1750 Venice.
The tale of tea originates many millennia earlier and far to the east. Twenty million years earlier, in the area of today's Assam and southwest China, there arose and evergreen shrub or small tree, today's Camellia sinensis.
Animal species appeared only to disappear but C. sinensis survived. Much later its habitat become occupied by a new animal, horticultural Homo sapiens. A wise man indeed who, in China's Shang Dynasty (first dynasty of documented Chinese history about 1766-1122 BC), came to regard ch'a as a medicinal beverage.
By the time of the magnificent Tang Dynasty (618-906 AD) ch'a had become a recreational beverage of note. China during this period included Korea, Manchuria, Mongolia, Tibet and Turkestan. Tang influence and tea spread through East Asian countries. Both reached Japan by 800 AD.
We have Portuguese merchants and priests active in the Orient for the introduction of tea into Europe in the 1500s. It was the Dutch East Indian Company that finally imported tea into Europe as a commodity; the first consignment arriving in 1610. Later the same century it had become fashionable in Briton. Samuel Pepys, in his celebrated Diary, recorded on 25 August 1660: "And afterwards I did send for a cup of tea (a China drink) of which I had never drank before, and went away." About 15 years later in Britain's North American colonies, samples of coffee were being given away free with purchases of tea to promote coffee drinking. Coffee, of course, is still the preferred drink of North Americans--more is drunk in Canada than the United States. This may have been assisted in some way by a quaint New England seasonal celebration when, on 16 December 1773, there took place the first large-scale attempt to make iced tea in Boston harbour.
Back in Britain though, tea prevailed. Author of Tom Jones and legal eagle Henry Fielding observed that "love and scandal are the best sweeteners of tea." There the beverage was entering, as it had previously in Japan, into the country's culture. Tea caddies with a lock protected the precious ingredient from thieving maids. Teakettles boiled the water, decanted into teapots, part of the tea service. A tea ball or a tea rose filtered the fragrant brew. Tea parties might be held. Slowly developed that essential to British culture, late afternoon teatime. "But indeed I would rather have nothing but tea," declaimed Jane Austin.
Still there was a fly in the ointment or perhaps, more accurately, a beetle in the tea caddy. China retained a monopoly on production. Indeed little was known in the West about Camelia sinensis. It was even thought that black and green tea came from two differing species. In fact, green tea results from fresh tips being wilted by steaming, while leaves simply dried turn black.
So it was that by the mid-1800s the East India Company of Britain decided to break the monopoly. They would start large scale production in India to bypass recalcitrant Chinese. But how to obtain the plants and the skilled technicians to culivate them? Kew Gardens in London had the answer.
In their employ was a resourceful Scotsman, Robert Fortune. For three years, from 1842, he had scouted costal southern China for exotic plants to please his botanical masters at Kew. Many of these he sent back safely in the newly-invented Wardian cases, terrarium-like portable greenhouses. Before returning home, he had become not only skilled at convincingly disguising himself as a native, but fluent in the language. And while not interested in collecting Camellia sinensis he had, at this stage, discovered details of its cultivation, harvesting and refinement.
This was to pay off later for Fortune. His employers at Kew Gardens sent him back to the Orient. This time tea plants were his target--various varieties of C. sinensis along with the horticultural help necessary successfully raise and process them.
It was a wily Scotsman versus equally wily Orientals. For the Chinese were not about to lose their precious production rights. But Scottish horticulturalists have long been known not only for their skill with plants but also in business. Fortune not only obtained thousands of plants and seeds but also a skilled cadre willing to follow them to eastern India.
So started India's entry into the tea industry. Not that China exactly retreated. In fact today, almost two-thirds of the world's production of ch'a originates in those two countries. When in 1934 Dorothy Parke moved into an apartment building at 444 East Fifty-second Street, Manhattan located, as she said, "far enough east to plant tea," she probably wasn't thinking of Kenya--the world's third largest producer of the fragrant brew.
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Fourth is Sri Lanka which, thanks to its former colonial masters, still retains the autonym of 'Ceylon Tea.' But that wasn't so in the beginning. First coffee came to the isle, just as it had in Britain. Then came coffee rust, a devastating disease. To encourage drinking tea instead, British bureaucrats repealed import duties.
The ploy worked! To the present, England is known as a nation of tea drinkers. And it was all because of a tea tax. And not, according to Danny Kaye complaining, "Boy! That coffee! No wonder, the English are a nation of tea drinkers! Their coffee is still about as good as American tea and believe me that can be bad."
It is not, however, everybody's cup of tea. The U.K. is a shocking third in that nation of tea drinkers. Turkey far exceeds any other country, knocking back an astounding annual 3.12kg per capita. Ireland claims second place at 1.96kg while the UK must be content with third, accounting for 1.94kg of tea consumption. This despite, as Alice Walker observed, "Tea to the English is really a picnic indoors." Well yes, and with their clammy climate . . . Surprisingly, China is way down the list in nineteenth place, followed closely by Canada, despite the very best efforts of Tim Hortons coffee establishments.
The United States, coffee loving as it is, consumers meager 0.23kg per head per year. Put it down them to good old American ingenuity to come up with the now ubiquitous 'tea bag.' Thomas Sullivan, a New York tea merchant, commenced sending samples of his teas in small silk bags to customers around 1908. According to legend, this led an English visitor to respond, on being asked if he would like a nice cup of tea, "Yes, but without the surgical dressings." However, it was left to the formidable Eleanor Roosevelt to put the record right, claiming, "A woman is like a tea bag--you can't tell how strong she is until you put her in hot water."
Alas for English traditions. Famed Anglo actress Angela Lansbury can be traced through her home by tea bags deposited hither and thither. The nadir was surely reached in 1978 when a Giles cartoon depicted chimpanzees overseeing a massive out of control railway operation with one on the telephone. "Industrial Tribunal? We're out of tea bags. What are you going to do about it?" For Brits, neither tea nor travel have changed.
Despite their failing grading as top tea consumers, we have the Brits to thank got many a tea tradition. In more genteel times, we might have welcomed teatime with a tea trolley piled with, amongst other comestibles, tea biscuits. The teapot would be kept warm covered with a knitted tea cozy. There were tea spoons, tea trays and tea tables. Meanwhile, the plebian masses eagerly awaited the arrival at work of the tea wagon and its surely attendant.
"Where there's tea there's hope," reassures Arthur Wing Pinero. Sure enough, round the world tea plantations are popping up like new tea bag blends. The climate of Darjeeling is similar to many another location. Cornwall in southwest England for one. There the Tregothnan plantation is gaining something of a reputation amongst connoisseurs. In Perthshire, Scotland, may be found the Wee Tea Plantation. Away in western Canada the Westholme Tea Farm on Vancouver Island is a growing operation. Locations spread across the U.S. as far apart as South Carolina, Hawaii and Washington State are all endeavouring to cash in. The Antipodes resound with Dry Ideas near Hobart, Tasmania and others spread across eastern Australian from Victoria, up into New South Wales and Queensland. Across the Tasmanian Sea in New Zealand the quaintly named Zealong on the North Island raises hope of supporting Kiwis as the world's sixth-largest tea drinkers.
Let us raise our tea cozies though to the Brits. Starting the day with a cuppa while still in bed is a tradition not to be sneered at. And not the least by the late humorous writer Eric Morecambe. "I always take my wife her morning tea in my pyjamas," he explained. "But is she grateful? No. She'd rather have it in a cup."
Wes Porter is a horticultural consultant and writer based in Toronto. Wes has over 40 years of experience in both temperate and tropical horticulture from three continents.
"We want our tea," demand Marco and Giuseppe, gondolieri, in Gilbert and Sullivan's The Gondoliers. One of the most delightful of the Savoy Operas, it was first performed in London, England in 1889. It was, however, supposedly set over a century earlier, in 1750 Venice.
The tale of tea originates many millennia earlier and far to the east. Twenty million years earlier, in the area of today's Assam and southwest China, there arose and evergreen shrub or small tree, today's Camellia sinensis.
