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The Story of Tea
Tea is a magical thing. Enjoyed the world over for nearly 5,000 years, in much the same way now as it was then.
Tea is often thought of as being a quintessentially British drink, and we have been drinking it for over 350 years. But in fact the history of tea goes much further back.
The story of tea begins in China. According to legend, in 2737 BC, the Chinese Emperor Shen Nung was sitting beneath a wild tea tree while his servant boiled drinking water, when a slight breeze stirred some leaves from the branches of the tree causing a few of the leaves to drift gently into the simmering water.
The Emperor Shen Nung, a renowned herbalist, decided to try the infusion that his servant had accidentally created. The tree was a Camellia Sinensis, and the resulting drink was what we now call tea.
It is impossible to know whether there is any truth in this story. But tea drinking certainly became established in China many centuries before it had even been heard of in the West.
Containers for tea have been found in tombs dating from the Han dynasty (206 BC - 220 AD) but it took the genius of the Tang Dynasty to emancipate tea from its crude beginnings to its quest for perfection of flavour and fragrance.
As the Tang Poet Lu Tung famously wrote
'I am in no way interested in immortality but only in the taste of tea'
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