The Perfect Gentleman Issue 1 - March 2016 | Page 28

Gourmet Gentleman

An
Introduction
to
Tea
by Ruairidh Bulger

Second only to water, tea is the most
commonly drunk beverage across the
world. Indeed, it was one of the factors
that helped to build the British Empire in
the 16th and 17th centuries. Flavours of
teas can be a subtle and as varied as wines,
and the more a person looks into tea and
its culture, the more there is to learn and
understand about it.
What is tea (and what isn't)?
Tea is an infusion, but not all infusions
are tea. An infusion of fresh mint is not a
tea, and neither is an infusion of
camomile, but both are often mislabelled
as tea. Tea itself is an infusion made using
the leaves of the tea plant (camellia
sinensis), which is an evergreen shrub
native to Asia. If the drink that you are
enjoying does not include leaves of the
tea plant, it is not tea and just an infusion.

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A Brief History of Tea
Tea originated in China as a medicinal drink.
Containers for tea have been found in tombs,
dating from the Han dynasty (206 B.C.E. to
220 C.E.), but it was under the Tang dynasty
(618 to 906 C.E.) that tea became truly
established as the national drink of the land.
During this period, Tea and tea drinking was
spread to Korea, Japan, and Vietnam. In
India, it has been drunk for a long (albeit
uncertain) period, but this seems to have
been concentrated to the Himalayan region,
until the British imported it much later.
In the 16th Century, tea was brought back to
the west by the Portuguese traders and
missionaries who had grown to like the
beverage while they were out in the East.
However it was first imported as a
commercial enterprise by the Dutch at the
very start if the 17th Century, from where it
soon gained international favour amongst
the wealthy elite.