Tea Through History
China is credited with the first cultivation of tea. Definitely, the spread of tea as a popular beverage can be attributed to the 780 AD writing of Lu Yu's - the Tea Classic. Around this time, monks start regular travel between China and Japan sharing and developing the culture of tea. Over the next 400 years, Japanese emperors and monks began the cultivation of tea, and the Japanese Tea Ceremony was born.
In the early 1600's AD the first European communities were exposed to tea via South Seas trading companies and through these companies tea cultivation was spread to India and Africa to meet the increasing British demand. Now, tea is grown in a variety of climates and soil conditions around the world and processed in many different forms.
The Boston Tea Party and the Opium Wars are examples of the role of tea in shaping our world. Zen Buddhism is so closely tied to tea that the founder, Bodhidharma, is often given credit for the discovery of tea. With at least two harvests a year from tea plants growing in a variety of climates, and production techniques that widely vary, flavors can run from light and sweet to full bodied and bitter.
