The Story of Tea

New traditions were established as The East India Company introduced new and exotic delights, initially these arrived as expensive foods or products in small quantities, thus the upper classes initially adopted them.  In England, early tea gardens held lavish outdoor events featuring fancy flowers, food, and tea, accompanied by fireworks and gambling.  In the early days of tea consumption these gardens gave tea drinking its exotic cachet.  Later The Company introduced the fashion for adding sugar into tea, enabling it to find markets for the sugar produced in The West Indies.

“I am a hardened and shameless tea drinker, who has for twenty years diluted his meals only with the infusion of this fascinating plant; whose kettle has scarcely time to cool; who with tea amuses the afternoon, with tea solaces the midnight, and with tea welcomes the evening.”

Samuel Johnson (1709-1784)

Over time, driven by the increasing amounts of tea imported, tea drinking, once an indulgence, quickly became a widely enjoyed luxury pastime.  Tea accounted for more than 60% of The Company’s total trade in the late eighteenth century.  The East India Company introduced Tea to England, but it has touched cultures for thousands of years and inspired many of its philosophers muse upon its properties..

“The best quality tea must have creases like the leathern boot of Tartar horsemen, curl like the dewlap of a mighty bullock, unfold like a mist rising out of a ravine, gleam like a lake touched by a zephyr, and be wet and soft like a fine earth newly swept by rain.”

Lu Yu (733-804)

To see The East India Company range of teas please click here click here