Tea History – Some Important Milestones
Ancient History
2800 BC approximately. According to legend Emperor Shen Nung discovers tea when some leaves from a tea bush blow into a pot of boiling water.
551-479 BC Tea was being drunk in China during the lifetime of Confucius.
350 AD First written reference to tea drinking in a dictionary compiled by Kuo Po in China.
400 approx. Tea established in China as a medicine.
618-906 The Tang Dynasty during which time tea gains popularity as the national drink of China – in the form of compressed brick tea, crumbled and boiled to make a beverage.
733 Lu Yu – the Chinese father of tea – is born.
780 Lu Yu writes his three volume treatise Ch’a Ching – the world’s first book about tea, that will immortalize him.
804 Lu Yu dies.
805 Dengyo Dash brings tea plants to Japan.
960-1279 The Sung Dynasty during which tea manufacture methods change to produce powdered tea that is whipped to a froth in hot water.
1191 Zen Buddhist monk Eisai introduces the tea ceremony to Japan.
1280-1368 Under Mongol rule ritualized tea drinking is seen as decadent.
1368-1644 The Ming Dynasty during which the production of leaf tea is introduced; leaves are steeped in hot water, and the teapot is invented.
17th Century
1660 English diarist Samuel Pepys first mentions drinking tea “did send for a Cupp of Tee (a China drink) of which I never drank before”.
1662 Tea drinking was by now common in Portugal – Charles II was betrothed to Catherine of Braganza who, on arrival by ship at Portsmouth asked for a cup of tea, but so rare was it in England at this time that there was none available and the princess was offered ale instead!
1664 First recorded import of tea into England, 100 lbs of China tea bought by the East India Company from the Dutch in Java.
1679 London Tea Auction opened.
18th Century
1706 Thomas Twining sets up as tea merchant in the Strand, London – Twining’s retail tea shop remains on the same site today.
1711 Exorbitant taxation of tea to fund war with Spain – tea prices rose to 5 shillings a pound.
1764 Charles Grey is born – later to become the eponymous Earl Grey of tea fame.
1773 The Boston Tea Party – a dispute over taxation without representation – destroys 342 chests of tea and sparks a memorable revolution.
1782 Free from Colonial bonds America starts trading for tea direct with China.
19th Century
1839 Formation of the Assam Tea Company to commercialize Indian tea production in competition with China.
1841 The social ritual of Afternoon Tea is introduced by Anna Maria, wife of the 7th Duke of Bedford.
1845 Arthur Brooke is born – and grows up to establish the Brooke Bond Tea Company in 1869.
1849 Thomas Lipton is born – to become perhaps the most famous tea entrepreneur ever.
1850s John Horniman invents a machine to hygienically pack tea in airtight foil packets.
1860 Young Tommy Lipton signs up as a cabin boy and sails from Glasgow to the USA where among many other jobs he works in a grocers selling tea.
1867 James Taylor plants the first tea bushes in Ceylon, now Sri Lanka.
1869 Famous tea clipper “Cutty Sark” is built and launched on the Clyde.
1870 Lipton opens his first grocery – Lipton’s Market – which in less than 20 years expands to a chain of 300 stores.
1873 First Ceylon tea sold at London Tea Auction.
1873 Mr Jackson, a tea engineer makes the first orthodox rolling table – still in use today in tea factories around the world and hardly changed in design.
1880 Ceylon coffee bushes destroyed by fungal blight causing a boom in the local tea industry.
1886 Taylors of Harrogate is established by Charles Taylor at 46 Stonegate in York as a tea blender and coffee roaster.
1888 Tommy Lipton enters the tea trade and by-passes the London Auction by importing direct from Ceylon, and advertises: “Direct from the tea garden to the tea pot.”
1894 First Lyons tea shop opened in Piccadilly, London.
1898 Tommy becomes Sir Thomas Lipton when he travels to the Isle of Wight to be knighted by Queen Victoria.
20th Century
1903 First tea planted in Kenya at Limuru, though not commercialized until the 1920s.
1904 Iced Tea was invented at the 1904 World Trade Fair in St Louis where the extreme hot weather and demand for cold drinks led Englishman, Richard Blechynden to pour his hot tea into glasses filled with ice cubes.
1907 Brooke Bond introduces tea distribution to retailers by a fleet of horse drawn vans.
1908 The tea bag is accidentally invented by Thomas Sullivan, a New York tea merchant, who sent samples of dry tea to his customers in small silken bags and was asked to supply more but with a coarser weave so that steeping would be improved!
1911 Indian Tea Research Association laboratory at Tocklai set up – and is still pioneering tea industry developments.
1913 Northern tea company Ringtons start home delivery of tea using horse vans – a fine example is on exhibition at Beamish Museum.
1921 Brooke Bond mechanize their distribution – building up to a fleet of 850 ‘little red vans’.
1925 Tea Research Institute of Sri Lanka established.
1930 Tea planter William McKercher invents the CTC machine that will cut tea finely enough to popularize the tea bag
1940 U-Boats in the Atlantic sink many merchant ships carrying tea and the UK Ministry of Food introduces a ration of just 2oz of tea per person per week.
1949 German engineer Adolf Rambold builds his fully-automatic tea bag packing machine – the Constanta, capable of producing 150 tea bags per minute.
1949 Patent granted for the double chamber tea bag – to be immortalized in Lipton advertising for its ‘Flo Thru’ efficiency
1952 Tea comes off ration.
1953 Tetley introduces tea bags to the UK market.
1961 Nestea instant tea introduced into the UK.
1965 Lipton sets up an experimental tea garden in South Carolina, USA.
1970 Open withering troughs replace manual methods in tea factories and hasten volume production methods.
1984 Unilever, owners of the Lipton tea brand, acquire Brooke Bond Ltd with tea estates in India, Kenya, Malawi and Tanzania.
1985 Lipton sells experimental tea garden which becomes Charleston Tea Plantation and supplies its American Classic tea to the White House.
1990 Teacraft Ltd – http://www.teacraft.com – established to supply tea equipment and tea technology consultancy.
1998 London Tea Auction closes.
21st Century
2000 Tetley Tea acquired by Indian company Tata.
2001 World production of tea tops 3 million tonnes for the fist time – that’s about 1.5 billion cups of tea!
2001 Creation of Beverage Partners Worldwide (BPW), a fifty-fifty joint venture between Nestlé and The Coca-Cola Company – to manufacture and distribute RTD teas globally.
2003 E-commerce tea company Nothing But Tea Ltd http://www.nbtea.co.uk founded to supply rare and exotic loose leaf speciality teas.
2004 First ever 100% speciality tea trade show – TakeMe2Tea- held in Las Vegas – now held annually as the World Tea Expo.
2005 Tregothnan in Cornwall, the UK’s first ever commercial tea garden launches its very special tea.
2003 Joint venture announced between Unilever and PepsiCo – Pepsi Lipton International – to manufacture and distribute RTD teas globally.
2005 Premier Brands sell Typhoo Tea to Indian company Apeejay.
2007 Teacraft sells its 15th miniature tea factory – to the Tea Research Foundation in Malawi http://www.teacraft.com/Miniature_Manufacture.html#ecmsystem
2009 Launch of TEA Magazine website.
