Time for tea: in celebration of the remarkable craftmanship involved in the making and taking of a cup of tea, Peter Brown tells the extraordinary story of how one of the best-loved beverages was introduced to the Western world

Apollo, April, 2004 by Peter Brown

Today the drinking of tea, coffee and chocolate is so commonplace among Western civilisations, it is difficult to imagine just how revolutionary these 'hot liquors' were to our forebears in the seventeenth century.

From the beginning, the first European writers on the subject were filled with bemused wonderment at the concept that tea and coffee should be drunk as hot as you can take it. They were not used to this idea: food and drink were rarely taken hot at the table and 'hot' was understood more in a medical context than as something temperature related. But why did these ancient civilisations decide the drinks should be taken hot and why do we continue to scald our palate in a similar fashion? Certainly, heat is needed to infuse or decoct the liquor and to dissolve the necessary addition of sugar, why the English have not adopted the American habit of taking ice in tea, for example, is still not fully understood.

Both tea and coffee were being 'discovered' by Europeans at around the same time. In 1559, a Venetian government official transcribed a report by a Persian traveller who observed the popular Chinese pastime of drinking tea:

... one or two clips of this decoction removes fever, headache, stomach-ache, pains in the side or in the joints and it should be taken as hot as you can bear it. (1)

Other early references to tea come to us through the reports of Dominican and Jesuit priests who were sent into China on missionary duty. In 1560, Friar Gaspar de Cruz noted:

Whatsoever person or persons come to any mans house of qualitie, hee hath a custome to offer him in a fine basket of Porcelane, or as many as the persons are, with a kinde of drink which they called Cha, which is somewhat bitter, red and medicinall, which they are wont to make of a certain concoction of herbes somewhat bitter: with this they welcome commonly all manner of persons that they doe respect, be they strangers or be they not; to me they offered it many times. (2)

By 1579, the Jesuit, Matteo Ricci, in a letter to his superiors, offered a more detailed description of the plant's cultivation and was the first to note a difference in brewing between the Chinese and the Japanese.

... The Japanders pay deare for it, ten or twelve Duckers a pound for the best, and use it otherwise, putting the powder of the leafe to hot water, as much as two or three spoonfuls: the Chinios put the leaves themselves into the hot water, which they drink leaving the leaves behinde. (3)

It was not until 1598 that the first mention of tea appeared in an English text, (4) and although the East India companies had established a foothold in Java, Siam and Japan by 1610, there was no attempt at a commercial trade in tea until much later. (5) Small quantities of tea were being given as ceremonial gifts by Austrian and Dutch ambassadors on royal occasions (6) but the beverage failed to find favour with the court of James I.

It was not until the 1650s that the situation changed when the Jesuit missionary Father, Alexander of Rhodes, published an account of his thirty years of travels in the Far East. (7) This was just the sort of commercial intelligence the traders needed, for he described how to tell good tea from bad.

On his return to France, the priest became the toast of Paris and his fame brought him into contact with the exiled English poet Edmund Waller, who together with Lord Jermyn were 'the only persons amongst the exiles able to keep a table'. (8) When Waller (by reputation a long-standing advocate of water drinking) returned to England in the 1650s he took up the promotion of tea amongst his friends (the so-called 'Wits') and parliamentary colleagues. Other Englishmen visiting Paris at the time of Wallet's residency were Henry Bennett, Earl of Arlington, and Thomas Butler, Earl of Ossory, who were themselves not only good friends but also bonded by marriage to daughters of a Dutch nobleman. (9) Presumably, these noblemen carried this knowledge and interest in tea with them on their sojourns to Holland for it is reported they were the first Englishmen at around this time to bring back for sale a quantity of tea from Holland 'at which time it was sold for 60s a pound'. (10)

Sometime after 1657, the merchant Thomas Garway, in an effort to generate interest, published a comprehensive description of tea and its many benefits. Garway also produced the earliest recipe for brewing tea to be printed in English, but sadly no copy has, as yet, been discovered. (11)

For such a novel product to gain general acceptance in seventeenth century Britain, it needed royal approval and usage at court. Prior to 1660, England had experienced eleven years as a Republic and therefore no such focus for polite society existed. All this changed with the return of Charles II to the throne of England and, more importantly, his subsequent marriage to the Portuguese princess Catherine of Braganza. It is reported that when Catherine arrived at Portsmouth on 13 May 1662, one of her first actions was to ask for a cup of tea. The embarrassed and luckless attendants only had a glass of ale to offer, which did not satisfy the Queen's thirst. (12)