Where does tea come from?
Tea comes from China, where it was drunk for many centuries before anyone wrote down how. From there it went to Japan, then Dutch ships brought it to Europe in the early 1600s, and the British later grew it in India.
TeaMug of black tea, about 250 ml3kcal
An emperor and a leaf
The favourite story says the emperor Shen Nung was boiling water under a tree in 2737 BC when a few leaves blew into his pot. He drank it and liked it. It is a legend, and the UK Tea and Infusions Association tells it as one. Britannica says tradition has tea known in China since about 2700 BC, but nobody can check that. What we can say is that tea is very old, and that it started in China.
Written down in China
The first records come much later than the legend. Britannica dates the first published account of how to plant, process and drink tea to around 350 AD. In the late eighth century a writer called Lu Yu wrote the Ch'a Ching, the Tea Classic, during the Tang dynasty, when tea became the national drink of China. Around 800 the first seeds reached Japan, carried by Buddhist monks who had studied in China, and tea was grown there by the 13th century.
Dutch ships and English coffee houses
Europe got its first tea from the Dutch, though the sources disagree on the year. Britannica says the Dutch East India Company brought the first load in 1610, and the UK Tea and Infusions Association says 1606. In England the diarist Samuel Pepys wrote on 25 September 1660 that he had a cup of tee, a China drink, for the first time. A London coffee house had already advertised it in 1658. It was rare and expensive, a drink for the rich.
A queen who drank tea
Then came Catherine of Braganza, a Portuguese princess who married King Charles II in May 1662. Her dowry included a chest of tea. She drank it instead of wine and ale, and the court copied her, then the aristocracy, then the wealthy. In 1664 the East India Company sent the king and queen a silver case of tea from its post in Macau. In 1669, Britannica says, the English East India Company brought China tea to the London market.
From China to India and beyond
For a long time all of Europe's tea came from China. In 1824 tea plants were found in the hills of Assam, and the British started growing tea in India in 1836, and the first Assam tea auction was held in 1839. Ceylon, now Sri Lanka, followed in 1867. Tea bags were invented in America in the early 1900s and became normal in Britain in the 1970s. Today a typical cup is a tea bag, hot water and maybe a splash of milk.