2737
B.C.
• The second emperor of China, Shen Nung, discovers tea when
tea leaves blow into his cup of hot water or so the story goes.
350
A.D.
• A Chinese dictionary cites tea for the first time as Erh
Ya.
400-600
•
Demand for tea as a medicinal beverage rises in China and cultivation processes
are developed. Many tea drinkers add onion, ginger, spices, or orange to their
teas.
400
• Now
called Kuang Ya in the Chinese dictionary, tea and its detailed infusion and
preparation steps are defined.
479
• Turkish
traders bargain for tea on the border of
Mongolia.
593
• Buddhism
and tea journey from China to Japan. Japanese priests studying in China carried tea seeds and leaves
back.
618-907
T'ang Dynasty
• Tea becomes a popular drink in China for both its
flavor and medicinal qualities.
648-749
•
Japanese monk Gyoki plants the first tea bushes in 49 Buddhist temple gardens.
• Tea in Japan is rare and
expensive, enjoyed mostly by high priests and the aristocracy.
725
• The
Chinese give tea give its own character ch’a.
729
• The
Japanese emperor serves powdered tea (named hiki-cha from the Chinese character)
to Buddhist priests.
780
• First
tea tax imposed in China.
• Chinese poet-scholar Lu Yu writes the first book
of tea titled Ch’a Ching (The Classic of Tea) in timely alignment with the
Taoist beliefs. The book covers detailed ancient Chinese tea cultivation and
preparation techniques.
805
• Buddhism
and tea devotion spreads further.
• The Japanese Buddhist saint and priest
Saicho and monk Kobo Daishi bring tea seeds and cultivation and manufacturing tips back from China and plant gardens in the Japanese
temples.
960-1280
Sung Dynasty
• Chinese tea drinking is on the rise, as are elegant
teahouses and teacups carefully crafted from porcelain and pottery.
•
Drinking powdered and frothed tea or tea scented with flowers is widespread in
China while earlier flavorings fall by the wayside.
• Zen Buddhism catches on
in Japan via China and along come tea-drinking temple rituals.
1101-1125
•
Chinese Emperor Hui Tsung becomes tea obsessed and writes about the best
tea-whisking methods and holds tea-tasting tournaments in the court. While “tea
minded,” so the story goes, he doesn’t notice the Mongol take over of his
empire.
• Teahouses in garden
settings pop up around China.
1191
•
Japanese Buddhist abbot Eisai, who introduced Zen Buddhism to Japan, brings tea
seeds from China and plants them around his Kyoto temple.
1206-1368
Yuan Dynasty
• During the Mongol take over of China, tea becomes a
commonplace beverage buy never regains its high social status.
1211
•
Japanese Buddhist abbot Eisai writes the first Japanese tea book Kitcha-Yojoki
(Book of Tea Sanitation).
1280
•
Mongolia takes over of China and since the Emperor of Mongol isn’t a “tea guy,”
tea drinking dies down in the courts and among the aristocracy. The masses
continue to indulge.
1368-1644
Ming Dynasty
• At the fall of the Mongol take over, all teas —
green, black, and oolong — is easily found in China.
• The process of
steeping whole tea leaves in cups or teapots becomes popular.
1422-1502
•
The Japanese tea ceremony emerges onto the scene. First created by a Zen priest
named Murata Shuko, the ceremony is called Cha-no-yu, literally meaning "hot
water tea" and celebrates the mundane aspects of everyday life.
• Tea’s
status elevates to an art form and almost a religion.
1484
• Japan's
shogun Yoshimasa encourages tea ceremonies, painting, and drama.
1589
•
Europeans learn about tea when a Venetian author credits the lengthy lives of Asians to their tea
drinking.
1597
• Tea is mentioned for the first time
in an English translation of Dutch navigator Jan Hugo van Linschooten's travels,
in which he refers to tea as chaa.
End of 1500s
•
Japanese tea master Sen-no Rikyu opens the first independent teahouse and
evolves the tea ceremony into its current simple and aesthetic ritual. During
this ceremony, one takes a garden path into a portico, enters upon hearing the
host’s gong, washes in a special room, and then enters a small tearoom that
holds a painting or flower arrangement to gaze upon. The tea master uses special
utensils to whisk the intense powdered tea. Tea drinkers enjoy the art or
flowers and then smell and slurp from a shared teabowl.
• Europeans hear about tea again when
Portuguese priests spreading Roman Catholicism through China taste tea and write
about its medicinal and taste benefits.
1610
• The
Dutch bring back green tea from Japan (although some argue it was from
China).
• Dutch East India Company market tea as an exotic medicinal drink, but it’s so
expensive only the aristocracy can afford the tea and its serving
pieces.
1618
• Chinese
ambassadors present the Russian Czar Alexis with many chests of tea, which are
refused as useless.
1635
• Tea
catches on in the Dutch court.
• A German physician touts a warning about the
dangers of tea drinking.
1637
• Wealthy
Dutch merchants’ wives serve tea at parties.
1650-1700
•
Tea parties become quite trendy among women across the social classes. Husbands
cry family ruin, and religious reformers call for a ban.
1650
• The
Dutch introduce several teas and tea traditions to New Amsterdam, which later
becomes New York.
1657
• The
first tea is sold as a health beverage in London, England at Garway's Coffee
House.
1661
• The
debate over tea’s health benefits versus detriments heightens when a Dutch
doctor praises its curative side while French and German doctors call out its
harmful side.
1662
• When
Charles II takes a tea-drinking bride (Catherine Braganza of Portugal), tea
becomes so chic that alcohol consumption declines.
1664
• English
East India Company brings the gift of tea to the British king and queen.
•
The British take over New Amsterdam, name it New York, and a British tea
tradition ensues.
1666
• Holland
tea prices drop to $80-$100 per
pound.
1669
• English
East India Company monopolizes British tea imports after convincing British
government to ban Dutch imports of tea.
1670
• The
Massachusetts colony is known to drink black tea.
1680s
• Tea
with milk is mentioned in Madam de Sévigné’s letters.
• The Duchess of York
introduces tea to Scotland.
1690
• The
first tea is sold publicly in Massachusetts.
1697
• The
first known Taiwanese cultivation and export of domestic tea takes place.
Late 1600s
•
Russia and China sign a treaty that brings the tea trade across Mongolia and Siberia.
18th
Century
• The controversy over tea continues in England and
Scotland where opponents claim it’s overpriced, harmful to one’s health, and may
even lead to moral decay.
1702-14
• During Queen Anne’s reign, tea drinking thrives in British
coffeehouses.
1705
• Annual
tea importation to England tops 800,000 pounds.
1706
• Thomas Twining serves up tea at Tom’s Coffee House in
London.
1717
• Tom’s
Coffee House evolves into the first teashop called the Golden Lyon. Both men and
women patronize the shop.
1723
• British
Prime Minister Robert Walpole reduces British import taxes on tea.
1735
• The
Russian Empress extends tea as a regulated trade.
• In order to fill Russia’s
tea demand, traders and three hundred camels travel 11,000 miles to and from
China, which takes sixteen months.
• Russian tea-drinking customs emerge,
which entail using tea concentrate, adding hot water, topping it with a lemon,
and drinking it through a lump of sugar held between the teeth.
1765
• Tea
easily ranks as the most popular beverage in the American colonies.
1767
• The
Townshend Revenue Act passes British Parliament, imposing duty on tea and other
goods imported into the British American colonies.
• A town meeting is held
in Boston to protest the Townshend Revenue Act, which leads to an American
boycott of British imports and a smuggling in of Dutch teas.
1770
•
Parliament rescinds the Townshend Revenue Act, eliminating all import taxes
except those on teas.
1773
• In
protest of British tea taxes and in what becomes known as the Boston Tea Party,
colonists disguised as Native Americans board East India Company ships and
unload hundreds of chests of tea into the harbor.
• Such “tea parties” are
repeated in Philadelphia, New York, Maine, North Carolina, and Maryland through
1774.
1774
• A
furious British Parliament passes the Coercive Acts in response to the American
“tea party” rebellions.
• King George III agrees to the Boston Port Bill,
which closes the Boston Harbor until the East India Company is reimbursed for
its tea.
1775
• After
several British attempts to end the taxation protests, the American Revolution
begins.
1778
• Before
the indigenous Assam tea plants is identified, British naturalist Sir Joseph
Banks, hired by the East India Company, suggests that India grow plant and
cultivate imported Chinese tea. For 50 years, India is
unsuccessful.
1784
• Parliament further reduces the
British import taxes on tea in an effort to end the smuggling that accounts for
the majority of the nation's tea imports.
1785
• 11
million pounds of tea are brought into
England.
1797
• English tea drinking hits a rate of 2
pounds per capita annually, a rate that increases by five times over the next 10
years.
1815-1831
•
Samples of indigenous Indian tea plants are sent to an East India Company
botanist who is slowly convinced that they are bona fide tea plants.
1826
• English Quaker John Horniman introduces the
first retail tea in sealed, lead-lined packages.
1830
• Congress
reduces U.S. duties on coffee and tea and other imports.
1833
• By an
act of the British Prime Minister Charles Grey (the second Earl Grey and the
namesake of the famous tea), the East India Company loses its monopoly in the
trade with China, mostly in tea.
1835
• The
East India Company starts the first tea plantations in Assam, India.
1837
• The
first American consul at Canton, Major Samuel Shaw, trades cargo for tea and
silk, earning investors a great return on their capital and encouraging more
Americans to trade with China.
1838
• The
first tea from Indian soil and imported Chinese tea plants is sold. A small
amount is sent to England and quickly purchased due to its
uniqueness.
1840s
•
American clipper ships speed up tea transports to America and Europe.
1840s and
50s
• The first tea plants, imports from China and India, are
cultivated on a trial basis in Sri Lanka (Ceylon).
1840
• Anna the
Duchess of Bedford introduces afternoon tea, which becomes a lasting English
ritual.
1849
•
Parliament ends the Britain's Navigation Acts, and U.S. clipper ships are
allowed to transport China tea to British ports.
• Tea wholesaler Henry
Charles Harrod takes over a London grocery store and grows it into one of the
world's largest department stores.
1850
•
Londoners get their first peak at a U.S. clipper ship when one arrives from Hong
Kong full of China tea.
• U.S. clipper ships soon desert China trade for the
more profitable work of taking gold seekers to California.
1856
• Tea is
planted in and about Darjeeling, India.
1859
• Local
New York merchant George Huntington Hartford and his employer George P. Gilman
give the A&P retail chain its start as the Great American Tea Company store.
Hartford and Gilman buy whole clipper shipments from the New York harbor and
sell the tea 1/3 cheaper than other merchants.
1866
• Over 90
percent of Britain's tea is still imported from China.
1869
• The
Suez Canal opens, shortening the trip to China and making steamships more
economical.
• In a marketing effort to capitalize on the transcontinental
rail link fervor, the Great American Tea Company is renamed the Great Atlantic
and Pacific Tea Company.
• A plant fungus ruins the coffee crop in Ceylon and
spreads throughout the Orient and Pacific, giving a hefty boost to tea
drinking.
1870
•
Twinings of England begins to blend tea for
uniformity.
1872
• The Adulteration of Food, Drink,
and Drugs Act deems the sale of adulterated drugs or other unlabeled mixtures
with foreign additives that increase weight as punishable offenses.
1875
• A new
British Sale of Food and Drugs Law calls adulteration hazardous to personal
health and increases its legal consequences to a heavy fine or
imprisonment.
1876
• Thomas
Johnstone Lipton opens his first shop in Glasgow, using American merchandising
methods he learned working in the grocery section of a New York department
store.
1890
• Thomas Lipton buys tea estates in
Ceylon, in order to sell tea at a reasonable price at his growing chain of 300
grocery stores.
Late 1800s
• Assam tea plants take over imported Chinese plants in India and
its tea market booms.
• Ceylon’s successful coffee market turns into a
successful tea market.
1904
•
Englishman Richard Blechynden creates iced tea during a heat wave at the St
Louis World Fair.
1904
• Green
tea and Formosan (Taiwanese) tea outsells black tea by five times in the
U.S.
1908
• New
York tea importer Thomas Sullivan inadvertently invents tea bags when he sends
tea to clients in small silk bags, and they mistakenly steep the bags
whole.
1909
• Thomas
Lipton begins blending and packaging his tea in New York.
1910
•
Sumatra, Indonesia becomes a cultivator and exporter of tea followed by Kenya
and parts of Africa.