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

Today the drinking of tea, coffee and chocolate is with equal reason commonplace among Western civilisations, it is difficult to imagine just by what means revolutionary these 'hot liquors' were to our forebears in the seventeenth century

From the beginning, the first European writers upon the subject were filled with bemused wonderment at the conception that tea and coffee should be drunken as hot as you can take it. They were not used to this idea: fare and drink were rarely taken scalding;-very warm at the table and 'hot' was understood more in a medical connection than as something temperature related. on the contrary why did these ancient civilisations decide the drinks should be taken of high temperature and why do we continue to scald our palate in a similar fashion? Certainly, heat is emergencyed to infuse or decoct the liquor and to dissolve the necessary addition of sugar, for what cause [i]or[/i] reason the English have not adopted the American habit of taking ice in tea, for example, is still not to the full understood.

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

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

Other early respects to tea come to us from one side the reports of Dominican and Jesuit priests who were sent into China upon missionary duty. In 1560, Friar Gaspar de Cruz noted:

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

through 1579, the Jesuit, Matteo Ricci, in a alphabetic character 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 Ducker a strike for the best, and use it otherwise, putting the dust of the leafe to fiery water, as much as sum of two units or three spoonfuls: the Chinios bring the leaves themselves into the burning water, which they drink leaving the leaves behinde. (3)

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

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

upon his return to France, the priest became the toast of Paris and his fame brought him into contact with the exiled English author of poems Edmund Waller, who together with Lord Jermyn were 'the sole persons amongst the exiles able to detain a table'. (8) When Waller (by reputation a long-standing advocate of water drinking) get backed to England in the 1650 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 solitary good friends but also ligamented by marriage to daughters of a Dutch nobleman. (9) Presumably, these noblemen carried this knowledge and interest in tea with them upon 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 60 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 produc the earliest recipe for brewing tea to be printed in English, on the contrary sadly no copy has, as notwithstanding been discovered. (11)

For similar a novel product to gain general acceptance in seventeenth hundred Britain, it needed royal approval and usage at court. Prior to 1660 England had experienced eleven years as a Republic and therefore no of that kind focus for polite society existed. All this changed with the get back of Charles II to the chair of state of England and, more importantly, his following marriage to the Portuguese princess Catherine of Braganza. It is reported that when Catherine arrived at Portsmouth upon 13 May 1662, one of her first actions was to ask for a goblet of tea. The embarrassed and luckles attendants solitary had a glass of ale to tender which did not satisfy the Queen's thirst. (12)