![]() ![]() And as Great Britain grew, interest in tea spread around the world.īy 1700, tea in Europe sold for ten times the price of coffee and the plant was still only grown in China. At the time, Great Britain was in the midst of expanding its colonial influence and becoming the new dominant world power. Many credit Queen Catherine of Braganza, a Portuguese noble woman, for making tea popular with the English aristocracy when she married King Charles II in 1661. That spread began in earnest around the early 1600s when Dutch traders brought tea to Europe in large quantities. This gave China a great deal of power and economic influence as tea drinking spread around the world. And in the 14th century during the Ming Dynasty, the Chinese emperor shifted the standard from tea pressed into cakes to loose leaf tea.Īt that point, China still held a virtual monopoly on the world's tea trees, making tea one of three essential Chinese export goods, along with porcelain and silk. The Japanese eventually developed their unique rituals around tea, leading to the creation of the Japanese tea ceremony. In the 9th century during the Tang Dynasty, a Japanese monk brought the first tea plant to Japan. They would draw extravagant pictures in the foam of the tea, like the espresso art you might see in coffee shops today. Tea was the subject of books and poetry, the favorite drink of emperors, and a medium for artists. Matcha became so popular that a distinct Chinese tea culture emerged. ![]() Tea only shifted from food to drink 1,500 years ago when people realized that a combination of heat and moisture could create a complex and varied taste out of the leafy green.Īfter hundreds of years of variations to the preparation method, the standard became to heat tea, pack it into portable cakes, grind it into powder, mix with hot water, and create a beverage called muo cha, or matcha. ![]() It was eaten as a vegetable or cooked with grain porridge. That original Chinese tea plant is the same type grown worldwide today, yet humans initially consumed it very differently. ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |