All about tea
The story of tea
Thousands, no probably millions of words have been written about tea: where did it come from? Who was that Chinese emperor who drank it first?
Why are the British so obsessed about it and why can no-one else make it as perfectly as you can? And so on.
We can answer all of these for you – have a look at our Q&A section or contact us if you can’t find the answer - but there are some things you may not have heard before…
Tea was taxed heavily in the 1770s in Britain, which made it as much of a hot property as alcohol for smugglers. The duty wasn’t finally removed from tea until 1964.
It was so popular in London in the 1850s that tea clippers raced each other over the 100 day journey to get the new season’s teas here – the fastest ships got the best price – and the most famous, the Cutty Sark, is now moored at Greenwich.
The most expensive tea we know of was sold in 1891: £36 15s for 1lb of Ceylon Golden Tips. This would be about £1,500 for 250g these days – what a bargain your £1.56 pack of 80 Tetley tea bags is…
Tea was rationed heavily in the Second World War: 2oz (57g) was allowed per person per week for 12 years from 1940. That would only make around 20 cups of tea – no wonder they used to drink it weak.
And an American story: they became obsessed in the early years of the 20th Century with getting the leaf out of the pot once the tea was brewed to perfection. This lead to them inventing the tea bag in 1920…which Tetley brought to the UK in 1953 and started a revolution.
