Tea & its Tales of Travel through Time

If only our morning tea could talk, it would tell us tales of its travels through ancient kingdoms, warring colonies, voyages by ships, journeys with monks and much more.

So, here’s me, on behalf of my chai, inviting you to take a tour across borders, and down memory lane.

Fun Facts:

The two names for tea: Did you know that tea is known either as “te” or as “ch’a” across the world (albeit some linguistic variations)? And the term indicates how tea has historically travelled to another country, i.e. by land or by sea.

Check out this brilliant “tea travel” map made by @indiainpixels

One tree, Many Avatars: All varieties of tea come from the same evergreen shrub called Camellia Sinensis.

Black tea, White tea, Oolong, Green tea, Pu-erh, and Matcha are but avatars of the same modest yet versatile plant.

It’s where the shrubs grow, how and when the tea leaves are plucked, dried, treated and rolled that make all the difference in colour and flavour.

Where it all began: Tea drinking has been a tradition in China for nearly 5000 years. It’s here that tea was accidentally discovered.

Legend has it that a leaf from the tea-shrub flew and fell into Emperor Shen Nung’s cup of boiling water. He named the brew “ch’a” or the Chinese word for investigate.

At first, tea was valued for its medicinal purpose but from 4th century BCE, the popularity of Green Tea, as a drink, grew across south-west China.

Black Tea and the British Empire

In 1845, lived a Scottish civil surgeon, called Dr. Archibald Campbell, in a quiet hamlet of Darjeeling, in the foothills of the Himalayas. He was the superintendent of this town under British rule. Deeply interested in botany, he decided to plant some Camelia Sinensis saplings, brought from China, and experiment with tea-growing.

Why? Because the British wanted to dominate the tea trade.

Side Note from History

In 1830, it is believed that the British Empire earned a whopping 3 million pounds in a single year from import taxes on tea! This was all from trade done by the British East India Company with China, where tea was exclusively grown.

No wonder the Bostonians got mad with the British Empire, and threw a whole shipment of tea into the sea, as a sign of protest against unfair taxation, aka The Boston Tea Party incident.

By the mid 1840s, the British could no longer afford to buy tea, in exchange for silver, from China. And they began to lose their monopoly on the trade.

Then, the British came up with a cunning plan,

They found the weakness of the Chinese man.

The Opium Wars and Tea

The British introduced opium farming in India- in an effort to trade this opium for Chinese tea.

The Chinese had an insatiable demand for opium, as the British elite did for tea. And at first, this trade, made through smugglers and small time traders, flourished.

Up until the Chinese rulers put a ban on opium sale due to a growing addiction amongst its people. The British didn’t take kindly to this rule. And they went to war with the Chinese.

History was unkind to China. They lost the Opium War, and had to compensate the Empire for its losses.

Thus, China gave Hong Kong to the British, in somewhat of a Shylock-ian deal, all for a cuppa tea, if you think about it.

Back to Darjeeling:

Incidentally, Dr. Campbell’s tea growing experiment was a hit. In the following years, tea nurseries sprouted across Darjeeling. The tea was dried and treated differently from the green tea in China- and, thus was born the Black tea.

Given the success of Darjeeling tea makers, the British chose Assam as its next tea growing region.

The Earl Grey tea was made from Assam tea leaves.

The British had succeeded in growing their own tea.

Today, the Darjeeling Black tea is amongst the most expensive and sought after teas in the world. It is renowned for its muscatel flavour which has earned its own GI (geographical indication) tag.

Fun facts:

Tea leaf Grading: Tea leaves from an estate are graded based on their quality.The highest grades are called Orange Pekoe, and the lowest ones are known as fannings.

But why the term Orange Pekoe you ask?

The name comes from the House of Orange or the Royal Dutch family (still in reign). In the 17th century, much before the British, the Dutch traded Green tea from Japan and China with Europeans. It was they who invented the quality grading system. Pekoe comes from the Mandarin word Bai Ho, meaning whitish hair on young tea leaves, indicative of its high quality.

The highest quality of Black tea is graded as FTGFOP (Finest Tippy Golden Flowery Orange Pekoe)

or as “Far Too Good For Ordinary People”, in jest.

Darjeeling Tea Estate Stays

There are quite a few tea estate tours and home-stays available in Darjeeling.

My vote goes to Tunsong Tea Retreat, and Glenburn Tea Estate.

If you wish to know which are the top brands selling Darjeeling tea, have a look here.

Darjeeling Black tea is known as the “Champagne of Teas”.

So, let’s raise our cuppas and make a toast to this bit of history in a cup. Cheers to chai!