A history of tea

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  -In 2737BC, a Chinese herbalist named Shen Nong was boiling hot water for his digestive and some leaves from the tea tree above him fell into his cauldron and drastically changed it, this was in an area in China between Northern Myanmar (formerly Burma), Yunnan and Sichuan  

-During the Tang Dynasty (about 7th century), tea was transported along the Yangtze river from West to East China, this journey was known as the Ancient Tea Horse Road

  -In the 8th Century, a Chinese Buddhist monk named Lu Yu wrote a tea book called Cha Ching, which means the Book of Song 

-In the 6th Century tea reached Korea and in the 9th Century, a Japanese Buddhist monk named Saichotransported tea to Japan, where they began to cultivate it (but it did not become popular until the 13thcentury due to tea plantations being secluded)

-In the 16th century (around 1537), Portugal established trade with China and slowly traded tea throughout Europe, it was mostly sent to Holland and to France and reached England in the 1610’s

-In the 1660’s, King Charles II and his wife, Portuguese infanta Catherine of Braganza, introduced tea to England, as a basket of tea leaves was included in the wedding gifts and the two began to throw tea parties in court, which then became a tradition

-In the 19th century, to break the Chinese monopoly on tea, the English East Company started sending tea shipments to India (20,000 shoots were transported but only 4,000 survived, this was due to the tea being damaged during transport, as well as the tea leaves thriving in higher altitudes)

-In 1838, Assam made their first black tea and it was sold in a coffee shop in London in January 1839

-Camellia Sinensis had already existed in Assam long before this, however it was chopped down by villagers for firewood and it was unknown to them that it could be used for tea until tea production began

-In 1904, the teabag was first created and then became more known in 1908, when Thomas Sullivan, a tea and coffee importer from New York, began to sell them around the world

-In 1930, Sir William McKercher, created the first CTC (crush, tear, curl) machine for black teas, so they would not have to continuously do this by hand, these types of teas are known as CTC or mamriteas, these teas tend to brew quicker and provide a stronger and more intense flavour, these machines spread to other parts of India and Africa in the 1950’s