The history of tea begins in China, going back thousands of years, with an exceptionally rich tea culture to match. Tea has been the drink of Chinese nobles and everyday people alike. First celebrated for its medicinal properties, it became a status symbol among the elite, a spiritual product among monks and their students, and a popular drink among the people for its taste. At times, it even served as a form of currency, for paying imperial tribute.
Chinese legend traces the origins of tea to the Emperor Shen Nong nearly five thousand years ago. The legend predates surviving written records and takes different forms. In perhaps the most common, Shen Nong was away in the field with his army and boiling drinking water while at rest, as was his custom, when leaves from a tea bush dropped into the water. He tried the brew and appreciated the feeling of stimulation that it gave, as well as how it alleviated the discomforts of the road. Thus, the legend points to tea’s first association with medicinal benefits.
By the 7th century, with the rise of the Tang Dynasty, tea was widespread in China, and enjoyed as a beverage, not strictly for its medicinal properties. Tea’s rise in popularity began with nobles, monks and poets, and from there began to spread throughout the population. Around the year 760, Lu Yu wrote what is acknowledged to be the first canonical work on tea, the Cha Jing, or The Classic of Tea, describing methods for making tea, brewing and serving it. Intertwining spiritual lessons with material instruction, the book became a foundation for the rich culture of tea drinking that developed in China.
At the time of Lu Yu, tea was compressed into bricks, which would be powdered and brewed directly in water, not steeped and removed. Aspects of this ancient technique of mixing powdered tea in water persist in the exceptional tradition of Japanese matcha, among other things. But with the rise of the Ming dynasty in the 14th Century, tea leaves were left intact, replacing the bricks, and steeped, rather than powdered, to be removed from the cup. This was an easier process for the farmers who made the tea, and the beginning of steeped tea as we still drink it to this day.
Today, many Chinese teas are still grown by independent farmers on relatively small lands. In combination with the great amount of tea produced nationally, and the vast area covered by Chinese tea-producing regions, that leads to an extraordinarily diverse variety of teas produced in China every year. While industrial tea production has been on the rise for decades, China continues to produce an incomparable diversity of artisanal, whole leaf teas, steeped in quality and tradition (pardon the pun). We curate our selection every year to celebrate that diversity with the best that we taste from China, year in and year out. Try them all!