China has the longest history with tea, going back thousands of years, with a tea culture to match. Tea in China encompasses rich aesthetic, social, and spiritual dimensions, and is also an everyday beverage for all walks of life. Despite being the world's largest tea producer, the heart of Chinese tea remains in its local practices, with small farmers and communities crafting teas often meant for local enjoyment.

In Japan’s extraordinary tea culture, the everyday pleasures of making, sharing, and drinking tea are enriched with spiritual, ethical, and aesthetic principles to celebrate simple beauty. The famous tea ceremony, or The Way of Tea (chadō, with matcha, or senchadō, with sencha) exemplifies this combination, as a form of hospitality raised to an art. Okakura Kakuzo, in his classic work, The Book of Tea, writes of the purity, harmony, and mutual consideration extolled in The Way of Tea.

India boasts a vast tea culture, unparalleled in its consumption and standing as the second largest tea exporter after China. Spanning centuries, India’s history with tea includes the rich tradition of Ayurveda, with its medicinal uses of tea and aromatic blends of herbs and spices. A hallmark of Indian tea is a robust character, featuring bold flavors from the Assamica variety of tea plant native to the region.

Known as the Land of a Thousand Hills, Rwanda’s consistently high elevation and volcanic soil make the ecology an excellent one for growing tea. The primary tea producing regions lie mainly in the west, including Rutsiro, Nyamasheke, and Nyabihu, where the lush green slopes are a destination in themselves.

Most tea in Kenya is grown in the beautiful highlands to the east and west of the Great Rift Valley. Tea production is split between large plantations and small-holding farmers and farmers’ collectives, who bring their leaves to centers throughout the country for production. Today, Kenya is among the top tea-producing lands globally.

Wild tea trees have grown in Thailand since ancient times. Some accounts hold that they were introduced from what is now the Yunnan region by nomadic Bulang peoples, for whom the tea tree was sacred, or by the ancient Dai Kingdom, which reached from Yunnan to northern Thailand and beyond. Today, tea is cultivated the elevated regions of northern Thailand, including Doi Mae Salong and Mae Hong Son, or the Land of Three Mists, where lush mountainsides offer excellent growing conditions.