HISTORY OF EVERY DAY DRINKS.. pART tWO - tEA

“You can never get a cup of tea large enough or a book long enough to suit me.” – C. S. Lewis

Coming from a family of British immigrants to Aotearoa/New Zealand, tea has been a part of my life since I can remember. A cup for a catch up, a shock, a moment of boredom, a celebration ( always with cakes of course) or just to pass the time. Not coming from particularly affluent stock, the tea was usually PG Tips or maybe Bell and always served with plenty of milk. Tea has been considered an essential pantry item for at least the last 200 years in the West and is the most consumed drink after water. It has a much longer history than this though, spanning back over 5000 years with its fair share of cloak and dagger stuff.

Tea comes from the plant Camellia sinensis which comes from the Theaceae family which also includes the beautiful ornamental camellias which are very common in Aotearoa/New Zealand. The tea plant was originally a larger tree than it is today and is native to East and Southern Asia. All tea, whether that be black, oolong, green, white, pu-erh or matcha comes from Camellia sinensis and it is just the way in which it is grown, fermented or processed which confers which type of tea it will be.

Camellia sinensis - Note the serrated edges on the leaf edge.

The story of the discovery of tea involves the probably mythical emperor Shennong. Known as the Divine Farmer, Shennong features heavily in Chinese stories surrounding the discovery of herbs. He was thought to have catalogued the first materia medica of medicinal herbs and to have discovered the wonders of tea. The story has it that after a long journey, Shennong sat down and his servants boiled him some water to drink. Unbeknownst to the servant, a few leaves from a tea tree ( the wild tea trees were much larger than the current bushes) had fallen into the water and it was served to the emperor. He drank the water and was invigorated and enamoured with this new plant find and thus tea was born. He was also thought to have used tea as an antidote to the many accidentally ingested toxic herbs he ingested when writing his materia medica.

Although this mythical discovery was close to 5000 years ago, the evidence of tea cultivation in China goes back to about 3000 years ago where it was thought to have first been used only by nobility, for ceremonies and as a medicine to promote health and longevity. Fast forward 1500 years or so and tea had really solidified its role as the national drink of China. It was particularly popular with Buddhist monks who used it to keep themselves alert during long hours of prayer and meditation. Towards the end of the 8th century, Lu Yu, an orphan that lived with monks in a monastery penned the first fan book to tea, the Cha Jing or The Classic of Tea. In this lil book he goes through the origins, the benefits, where to grow and how to prepare - sounds like a practical book if you ask me!

The Tea Classic

Although folks like to think that matcha originates in Japan, it too came from China where it was popular to use whisk a powdered tea into hot water during the Song Dynasty (960 - 1279 CE). This was around the time that a Japanese monk named Easai was visiting the monasteries of China. Easai was taught the preparation and benefits of powdered tea from the Zen Buddhist monks with whom he lived. When he returned to Japan, he took with him a new love of this powdered tea, the knowledge and methods to prepare matcha AND some tea seeds. Once back in Japan, Easai planted the tea on the monastery grounds in Kyoto. Subsequently Zen Buddhist monks established the methods and techniques to grow tencha which is the shade grown, vibrant tea ground to make into matcha. Interestingly as the Song Dynasty was conquered, powdered tea fell out of favour with the Chinese people , who much preferred the infused leaves, but it became popular in Japan and still is today.

Matcha - powdered, shade grown green tea

People in the Western world had heard about tea from missionaries during the 16th century and it was likely Portugese traders that first bought it back to their lands. From there, in 1610 Dutch merchants took imports of tea from China and Japan to Europe where it was distributed to affluent areas for the use of royalty and the very rich. Despite its reputation as the tea drinking capital of the universe, tea was not initially popular in Britain. It still had a penchant for coffee but over time it began to become more popular, especially with women. In 1662 Charles II married the tea addict Portuguese princess Catherine of Braganza and she made drinking tea the cool thing to do in England at least for the wealthy. She was a total influencer. For 1662.

Catherine of Braganza, the tea addict and her honey Charles II

Over the next hundred years, tea become more popular in Britain, mostly still amongst the wealthy. It did have its detractors though. Many wealthy land owners thought that tea made peasants less manageable and they would rather they drank beer, other party poopers suggested that it caused addiction as strong as that to opium, that it was not meant for Europeans and that it made women dry out, be less beautiful, become crazed addicts and be infertile . As it was considered more of a women’s drink, I think maybe the men were a bit worried that the ladies might get together, have some girl talk, realise they could probably do better and leave their sorry asses. Thus fellas said it made us ugly. Nice one guys.

Into the Victorian era, came the industrial revolution and the longer days that widespread gas lighting provided. This meant that dinner, at least for the wealthy, would sometimes not be served until late into the evening. This left many people feeling peckish in the late afternoon and thus afternoon tea was born. This cuppa tea and a slice of cake practise became widespread amongst women who started to have afternoon tea parties. This practise allowed women to socialise informally in their homes, without their husbands and was a step on the path to women’s liberation. It is during this era that the tax on tea was dropped from 120% to 12% so it was widely used throughout most classes.

A Victorian afternoon tea

But its not all cuppas and cucumber sandwiches. The British love of tea and the government tax income it generated, that has been at the root, or at least certainly dancing around the stem of two conflicts - The American Revolution and The Opium Wars.

The American colonists used to be big tea drinkers so they also imported a lot of tea both from Dutch traders and from the British. Problem was that the British decided that they would make the American colonists buy their tea exclusively from the East India Company and they would tax it at a rate they saw fit. The American colonists took exception to this and when three ships made the port in Boston in December 1773, American colonists stormed the boats, threw the tea overboard and declared they would not pay the taxes. No taxation without representation they cried! The British responded unfavourably and the ensuing tensions between the colonists and the coloniser that arose, led to the American Revolution 18 months later in April 1775.

The Boston Tea Party

Fast forward 70 years to the middle of the 19th century, China was exporting a lot of tea ( silk and porcelain also) to England as everyone needed their cuppas. The Chinese did not really have much demand for any of the woolen products that were key exports from Britain and thus around 40% of the worlds silver was stockpiled in China. Unhappy with this arrangement, and wanting to even the trade score, the British began to increase the export of opium from their Indian colonies into China. They did this by bribing officials, orchestrating smuggling operations to get opium into further into the country and giving free samples to unwitting Chinese people. This had devastating consequences for China and its people with millions of people becoming addicted and weakened and a steady stream of silver left China. In 1838 the Emperor tried to shut down the Opium trade but the British reacted by sending in their troops and calling war. China lost the war and was forced to sign a peace treaty which allowed unimpeded bilateral trade, including opium to many of Chinas ports, forced the Chinese to reparations and also to hand over Hong Kong as a British colony. A subsequent war later that century saw China become a semi colony of the British and more ports and trade opened up, allowed missionaries unimpeded access to the country and opium became legal. This period in Chinas history is very dark and signalled the fall of 300 years of Qing Dynasty rule and a century of war, unrest and famine.

So yeah, people must really love tea. But why? Is it really that good? Is it a panacea?

Well maybe. Tea is naturally high in polyphenols which have antioxidant actions and thus help to protect against the oxidative processes that contribute to degenerative diseases and aging and cardiometabolic issues. Tea also contains a host of methylxanthines which include caffeine, theophylline and theobromine which all are slightly stimulating in action. Tea also contains amino acids, one of note which is theanine. Theanine has a calming action on the central nervous system and promotes a kind of calm focus. Matcha appears to have a higher amount of polyphenols, caffeine and theanine than other green or black teas. This is both due to the practise of growing the tea under shade and also because the entire leaf is consumed rather than just the infused water.

So next time you have a cup of tea or a cup of Magick Matcha spare a thought for the thousands of years of history in that little cup.