Category Archives: Tea History

What Diversity in Tea Means to Your Next Cup – Japanese Green Tea Cultivars

As we have discussed before, tea originates from the Camellia Sinensis plant. However, just as the leaf size of tea grown in China vary dramatically different from that grown in India, so too does the varieties, or tea cultivars grown in Japan differ. As the tea plant has traveled the globe, countries have invested in the tea industry, developing many different tea cultivars more suited for their part of the world. Tea cultivars are the cultivated variety of a tea plant selected and breed by humans for a very specific set of characteristics like flavor, resistance to pest or diseases, and speed of growth. What that tea cultivar was created for directly impacts the flavor of the final tea product. So why care about these tea cultivars, so long as I get a good cup of teas?

As climate change alters the behavior of the jet stream and therefore our weather patterns, it will affect the quality and quantity of tea being produced. Countries around the global are busy trying to breed a tea plant that can handle longer spells of drought, cold, rain and other weather pattern changes so as to minimize its effects on tea production. So how do these researchers balance the need for a more hearty plant with keeping its signature flavor?

Rows of Trimmed Tea Plants - Tea Cultivars

Tea Plantation Kirishima, By Akuppa John Wigha, CC By 2.0

Over Fifty Tea Cultivars in Japan

Japan, offers an excellent case study of the impact of cultivar diversity in the tea industry. Since the 1970’s, when Japan mechanized its tea harvesting in response for more demand for tea and less labor to harvest it, the country has been a study in both the positive and negative impacts of cultivar development and selection. There are currently fifty-two tea cultivars registered with the country that are part of the commercial tea industry, but that was not always the case. In the 1970’s, the Yabukita cultivar was selected as the best tea cultivar for mechanized harvesting while keeping the flavor that was expected in Sencha tea. Yabukita became the tea plant of choice and rose to be almost 75% of all tea plants used for commercial production (Chika Yagi, 2010).

Having a nearly mono-culture tea industry created two very big problems for Japan. First, there were frequent outbreaks of grey blight and pest infestations that would practically wipe out a single season’s harvest. Then, in years when the crop could be harvested it caused price fluctuations in tea because the entire tea harvest occurred at the same time, glutting the market and dropping prices. The National Institute of Tea Science quickly caught onto these problems and, in the 1980’s, began the development of more tea cultivars with different harvest periods and better pest and disease resistance.

Tea Cultivars Plus Standardized Cupping Methodology

In breeding more tea cultivars, Japan developed a regimented harvesting and simple tasting procedure to ensure flavor was not lost while breeding for other traits. Their steps go so far as to dictate time of day of harvest, number of leaves to harvest, drying time and then cupping instructions. They even require the tasting bench to be placed near a window with diffused morning sunlight to help standardize the evaluation of the color of the dried leaves and brewed liquor during cupping. This attention to the small details around testing for the final product of cultivar allowed the Japanese tea industry to introduce more cultivars with extended harvesting periods, disease and pest tolerance, without losing flavor (Chika Yagi, 2010).

It gives me great hope that as other countries like India and Kenya start their own cultivation of new varieties in response to climate change that they can turn to Japan as a model to follow. Do you see the cultivar that makes your favorite Japanese green tea below?

Five of the Most Widely Used Tea Cultivars in Japan
Tea Cultivar Name:	Yabukita	Okuhikari	Okumidori	Saemidori	Yutakamidori
Spring Harvest Time:	April to mid-May	5 to 6 days later than Yabukita	Later than Yabukita	Earlier than Yabukita	5 days earlier than Yubakita
Cold Resistance:	High	High	High	Low	Medium-High
Pest and Disease Resistance:	Susceptible to anthracnose	Resistant to anthracnose	Slightly susceptible to anthracnose	Resistant to anthracnose	High Resistance to anthracnose
Main Type of Green Created from Cultivar:	Sencha	Sencha/Bancha (higher yielding than Yabukita)	Tencha	Matcha	Gyokuro

Works Cited
Chika Yagi, N. I. (2010, August). Characteristics of Eight Japanese Tea Cultivars. Honolulu: College of Tropical Agriculture and Human Resources, University of Hawaii at Manoa.

CSS Shenandoah: Tea Clipper Turned Confederate Raider

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This week we are deviating a bit away from a pure tea related blog and taking inspiration from a book by Clive Cussler and Grant Blackwood. Their book Lost Empire, a story about treasure hunters Remi and Sam Fargo who find a ships bell off the coast of Zanzibar, Tanzania leading them on a search for information about the Confederate Sailing Ship (CSS) Shenandoah, a ship which began life as a tea clipper ship before becoming a commercial raider in the US Civil War. Curiosity got the best of me and I wanted to find out if the Shenandoah actually existed and what its role in history actually was. As it turns out the Shenandoah did actually exist and has a fascinating story all its own.

The CSS Shenandoah began life as the steam cruiser Sea King, intended for the Chinese tea trade.

“From the North British Daily Mail, August 18^th, 1863: ‘She is named the Sea King, and is, we understand, the first screw steamship built on the principle of iron frames and wooden planking, and also the first steamer that has been specially constructed for the China trade, having been built with the view of competing with the fastest ships in the trade direct from China to London, in bringing home the first teas of the season.’” (Grace’s Guide, 2012)

Confederate Sailing Ship Shenandoah

Constructed in Glasgow, Scotland in 1863 by Alexander Stephen & Sons, who also built the paddle steamers Fergus and Dare as blockade runners for the Civil War (Grace’s Guide, 2012), the Sea King was built with an iron frame and wooden deck. This alone was somewhat novel for the time as iron based ships were a very new concept and there were still many who thought iron ships could never float. In fact the British government didn’t even allow transport of mail in iron vessels until 1960 (Grace’s Guide, 2012).

During its construction the ship attracted the attention of Confederate agents in Europe looking for candidates for commercial raiding ships. In particular, she was a three mast sailing ship with an auxiliary coal-fired steam engine and a screw that could be raised while sailing to reduce drag. (Markowitz, 2013) The ability to run either as a sailing vessel or under steam power allowed the ship to be very fast and make headway in a variety of conditions.

After an initial voyage to deliver British troops to New Zealand, the Confederate Navy secretly purchased her. She was met at sea by confederate officers and equipment necessary to refit her for military purposes including the installation of large guns. The CSS Shenandoah set sail October 1864 for what would be only a 13 month voyage.

James Iredell Waddell, Captain of the CSS Shenandoah

Commanded by James Waddell, the CSS Shenandoah regularly needed to recruit sailors as a large crew was necessary to meet needs for sailing, firing guns, and boarding other ships. Many sailors were recruited from captured ships and when she arrived in Melbourne, Australia in January 1865 for repairs she was able to take on quite a number of new replacement crew members.

The Shenandoah focused on unarmed merchant ships from the Union. Among others, she destroyed over 20 whaling vessels and may have inadvertently helped end of the US whaling industry, having wiped out nearly 50% of the fleet during her short service. Despite the civil war ending in May 1865, the CSS Shenandoah didn’t receive official word until after capturing and destroying about two dozen ships. She finally learned that the Civil war had ended in late June 1865 off San Francisco. Rather than returning to the United States, she sailed to England and was turned over to the British in Liverpool in November 1865.

After that the Shenandoah was sold on behalf of the United States to Zanzibar and was renamed to the El Majidi. At this point the details are a bit fuzzy, with various sources suggesting she then served as a passenger liner, a slave ship, or a cruiser in the Zanzibar navy.

Sultan Sayyid Majid bin Sa’id, the new owner of the Shenandoah, now the El Majidi, was the Sultan of Zanzibar which had had only been recognized as an independent realm in 1861. This was a time when the British Government was pressuring Zanzibar to end slavery.

A couple of additional notes to round out the story of the CSS Shenandoah:

She was the only Confederate ship to circumnavigate the globe.
Her battle flag still sits in the Museum of the Confederacy in Richmond, VA.

Map of Tanzania

As for Zanzibar and tea; while Zanzibar itself is known for cloves, the island is now part of Tanzania. The country of Tanzania is a grower of tea, like Kenya to the north. The tea industry in Tanzania is supported in part by the Tea Board of Tanzania, the Tea Research Institute of Tanzania and the Tanzania Smallholders Tea Development Agency.

Works Cited

Born 2 Suffer. (2008, January 23). The Al Bu-Said Dynasty. Retrieved from KBI-SGD (Born 2 Suffer): http://borntosuffer1.blogspot.com/2008/01/al-bu-said-dynasty_23.html

Grace’s Guide. (2012, November 6). A Shipbuilding History. 1750-1932 (Alexander Stephen and Sons): Chapter 2. Retrieved from Grace’s Guide: British Industrial History: http://www.gracesguide.co.uk/A_Shipbuilding_History._1750-1932_(Alexander_Stephen_and_Sons):_Chapter_2

Markowitz, M. (2013, January 9). CSS Shenandoah and the Last Shot of the Civil War. Retrieved from Defense Media Network: http://www.defensemedianetwork.com/stories/how-the-rebels-saved-the-whales/

American Tea Culture

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Golden Dragon Tea

Recently Hillary and I spent a couple weeks in Florida visiting family and having our son spend some time with his grandparents. As usual we brought our own tea. During a break we visited a well-known tea house which featured a wide selection of over sixty teas as well as serving salads and sandwiches. Hillary selected an Earl Grey and Jasmine blend while I selected an oolong described, in part, as rare. The tea itself tasted great but I felt the tea house left us short. Specifically, the tea infuser was removed from the pot before it was brought to the table. We had no option to examine the tea leaves nor have a second steeping. So is it that odd to expect an institution serving premium tea to provide access to the infused leaves? And this begs a larger question. How does one define “American Tea Culture”?

Culture can be defined as “the sum of attitudes, customs, and beliefs that distinguishes one group of people from another.” (Dictionary.Com, 2014) We are dominated by a coffee culture in this country now, but that hasn’t always been the case. Early in our history we were primarily tea drinkers, dating back to the early days of the nation and beginning the transition to coffee with the Boston Tea Party at which point it became unpopular to drink tea, lest you be seen as supporting the British. Over time came wars involving Asia, further eroding the tea as a part of the American way of life.However, tea didn’t fully fade away, and throughout our history we have opened our doors to large numbers of immigrants, a number of which were displaced from their homelands during political upheaval. For example we helped relocated nearly a million people from Vietnam in the 1970’s after the fall of Saigon and the end of the Vietnam War. Immigrants from Vietnam moved primarily to Southern California but also Houston, TX, the Washington DC suburbs and a variety of other cities. The Vietnamese brought with them their language, beliefs, and consumption of hot and iced tea. (Peter Cody Hunt, 2002)

Today the American Tea Culture is hard to pin down, involving a variety of different things. On the one hand we have tea in a restaurant atmosphere. We have a growing number of tea houses with fancy tea pots and cups as well as light fare or coffee & tea establishments offering a trendy atmosphere where you can get coffee, tea, bagels, and other food from a counter to sit in or take out.

Sun Tea by flickr user SanFranAnnie, CC BY SA 2.0

There is sweet tea, iced tea, and sun tea. As far as tea in the United States goes it is overwhelmingly iced. Iced tea is featured nearly everywhere in the south and served up for breakfast, lunch and dinner. In some parts it is sweet tea with a good helping of sugar or sweetener added, while in other areas its straight black. For Hillary, growing up in Arizona only a few miles from Mexico, her favorite was sun tea made simply by adding a few teabags to a jar of cold water and setting outside in the Arizona sun. A few hours later simply pour over ice and enjoy!

Bubble Tea by flickr user ohallmann, CC BY 2.0

An alternative for many in this country is tea as occasional “get well” drink, often from grocery store teabags, including tea, lemon, and honey to relieve a sore throat, or herbal remedies purported to help overcome sickness. In fact America, being the melting pot that it is, sees different uses based on different cultural backgrounds. For many Hispanics “traditional practices include using home remedies (e.g., drinking herbal or spiced teas) and seeking care from relatives, neighbors, community members, or traditional health care providers.” (US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 2012) Haitians “drink lots of water and homemade fruit juices, coffee in the morning, and tea only when sick.” (Jessie M. Colin) And there is a significant Asian population in Southern California with shopping catering to the population and bubble tea shops for younger generations. (Medina, 2013)

We have portions of the population who seek benefits from green tea in the form of food ingredients, dietary supplements, facial masks, and a whole host of other uses.

Lastly, there are those of us who enjoy loose leaf tea, the myriad varieties, the historical significance, different brewing methods, blends, scenting, baking, and more. We can get our fix from specialty tea shops sprinkled throughout the country, online, and regional festivals ranging from the Pacific Northwest and Los Angeles International Tea Festivals to the NYC and Philly Coffee and Tea Festivals.

In the end I’m not sure one can really pin down “American Tea Culture”. Like America there are options for everyone and plenty of room to explore, no matter what your preference. Is one aspect wrong and another right? Is one a more worthwhile aspect of tea on which to focus? What is your preference? Did we leave out your favorite aspect of American Tea Culture?

Tell us what you think and share this blog with another tea lover…

– David at Dominion Tea

Works Cited

Dictionary.Com. (2014, 01 22). Culture | What is the dfinition? Retrieved from Dictionary.com: http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/culture?s=t

Jessie M. Colin, P. R. (n.d.). Cultural and Clinical Care for Haitians. Betty Hastings, LCDR US Public Health Service, Indian Health Services.

Medina, J. (2013, April 28). The New York Times. Retrieved from New Suburban Dream Born of Asia and Southern California: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/04/29/us/asians-now-largest-immigrant-group-in-southern-california.html?_r=0

Peter Cody Hunt, M. (2002). An Introduction to Vietnamese Culture For Rehabilitation Service Providers in the U.S.

US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. (2012). Building Our Understanding: Cultural Insights – Communicating with Hispanic/Latinos.

American Tea History

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Tea traveled to America with the colonists who arrived from all European countries, with some colonies like New Amsterdam (modern day New York) being heavier tea drinkers than all of England at the time_{(Smith & Kraig, 2013)}. The British implemented a mercantile system, as with its other colonies, which focused on trade to increase its wealth. With this system London based businesses were protected through the use of trade barriers, regulations, and subsidies but it also required the British government to fight smuggling and illegal trading with other countries, especially by American merchants.

Early American Tea Experience

American Tea consumption is tied tightly to the early ship building in the colonies. Massachusetts and Pennsylvania were both major ship building colonies, where craftsman took advantage of the abundance of local resources, craftsman, and cheap labor to build more and faster clipper ships than the British. Many of these clipper ships were put into use by the American merchants to trade directly with other countries, bypassing the British government. Smuggling was extremely common in the American colonies and tea was high on the list of illegal goods.

American Tea drinkers are less familiar with asian teapots and accessories.

Small Yixing Teapot

The colonists adopted many of the British customs like tea drinking both at home and in public coffeehouses (Yes, coffeehouses did exist 300 years before Starbucks). It should be noted that much of the tea consumed in the colonies and Britain was green tea_{(Smith & Kraig, 2013)}. The social demand for tea, and the additional taxes levied on tea from the British East India Company made smuggled tea a very common commodity in the colonies, most coming from the Dutch East India Company. The loss of revenue by the British East India Company did not go unnoticed and in 1767 the tea tax was levied. This tax became one of many levied on the colonists in the ten years leading to the Boston Tea Party and the American Revolution. As Joseph M. Walsh noted in 1892, “The birth of the greatest nation of all time due to a three-penny tax on tea!” _{(Walsh, 1892)}

After the revolution, American merchants used their clipper ships to go direct to China for trade, bringing tea and other goods legally into the United States without British involvement. These merchants became the first of the American millionaires, with tea being a dominant contributor to their wealth. This wealth was later used to give loans to the fledgling American government to purchase arms for the War of 1812 other ventures necessary to stabilize and expand the country.

American Industry and Tea

Tea consumption thrived in the United States through the 1800’s with farmers experimenting with growing tea plants in the country. The US Department of Agriculture even published a study about using tea as a commercial crop in 1897. There is still a commercial tea plantation in South Carolina, new tea farms in Hawaii, and the US League of Tea Growers working to increase the growth of tea in America.

It was in the early 1900’s that America made perhaps its largest contribution to modern tea culture, first through the large scale introduction of iced tea and then through the invention of the tea bag. While iced tea has been documented in American cookbooks dating back to 1870’s, it was at the World’s Fair in 1904 that iced tea was introduced in a big way to the public. With the warmer US climates, iced tea still remains the most consumed tea in the US. The second was the accidental invention of the tea bag by an American, Thomas Sullivan, who sent small samples of his tea in silk bags to his clients in 1908. Those clients went on to ask Thomas to send their tea in bags going forward and since silk was expensive he created his bags out of paper.

American Tea drinkers love beautiful European inspired teapots.

Antique Teapot

American Tea Consumption and World Wars

American tea consumption saw significant declines around World War I (1914-1919) and then again around World War II (1939-1945) because of significant disruption in trade with China and Japan.. Trade with China did not resume after WWII until 1971. As green tea was produced predominantly in China and Japan, this left black tea from India to satisfy the US market. Current tea consumption in the United States is 85% iced tea and still overwhelmingly black.

As loose leaf tea becomes easier for the US consumer to get and consumer awareness of options increases, the growth in the specialty loose leaf market will mirror that of coffee and wine bringing a large variety of tea to market. I am looking forward to having more options in the high quality tea market, are you?

– Hillary

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Works Cited

Smith, A., & Kraig, B. (2013). The Oxford Encyclopedia of Food and Drink in America, Volume 1. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Walsh, J. M. (1892). Tea – Its History and Mystery. Philadelphia: Henry T. Coates & Co.

A Brief History of Tea

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Lu Yu – In Xi’an on the grounds of the Great Wild Goose Pagoda by Nat Krause, July 26, 2005, CC – 2.0

The history of tea is too long for a single blog post, but here we try to hit the highlights and key milestones in time. Tea has been consumed by humans for a really long time and has influenced international relations for centuries. According to legend, tea was discovered in 2737 BCE in China when the leaves of a nearby evergreen fell into the boiling water of the Emperor Shen Nung creating a beverage that reinvigorated him. The first credible texts referencing tea plantations and the consumption of tea appear around 1000 BCE. However, it took until the Tang dynasty (618-906 CE) for tea to become China’s national beverage. It was during this dynasty that Lu Yu wrote the first book entirely about tea called Ch’a Ching, The Classic of Tea.

Tea appears to have first travelled beyond China during the late 500’s CE to Japan by way of Japanese Buddhist monks who utilized tea during their meditation rituals to maintain alertness. Tea was first offered to the Russians in 1618, but the Czar did not like the taste, so tea failed to take hold there until the middle of the 1600’s. Once the taste did develop in Russia, tea traveled thousands of miles in a caravan and was most likely the same Pu-erh tea that was traded with the Mongolians and Tibetans. Even though European explorers like Marco Polo mention tea in their logs as early as the 13^th century, Europeans did not come into contact with tea in any large scale until 1627 CE by way of a Portuguese trading vessel. As an American, tea is considered to be British, but it was the mainland of Europe that adopted tea first and it wasn’t until Charles II married a Portuguese princess, some forty years later, that tea took hold as fashionable in Britain with the British East India Company placing its first order of tea in 1664_{(UK Tea Council, 2014)}. Today, Europe still maintains a significant role in the tea trade with parts of the continent exporting more tea than some of the countries that actually grow it commercially.

Painting by Lai Fong of an American Clipper Ship

Portrait of an American Clipper Ship by Lai Fong (Lai Fong of Calcutta, fl. 1870-1910) currently at Childs Gallery, Boston, MA

Tea traveled with the colonists to America and it is the tax on tea that is credited as pushing the colonists to their breaking point with the British monarchy, helping to instigate the American Revolution. While America was trying to figure out how to be a country, the Chinese emperor decided that foreign trade was to be paid for with silver, putting a very large burden on the British East India Company. In response, they began to heavily export opium to China at the time to off-set the silver requirement, since the Chinese government did not stop the merchants from accepting opium instead of silver. Simultaneously, the British began trying to figure out how to cultivate tea in India.

At about the same time that the British had success in growing tea in the Assam region of India, 1839, the First Opium War broke out between the British and Chinese. At the start, it was estimated that the amount of opium flowing into China had increased to 40,000 chests annually from the pre-silver requirement level of 4,500 chests, prompting the Emperor to have local government officials arrest opium merchants and seize their stocks to be destroyed_{(Greenberg, 1951)}. In response, the British sent troops from India both decimating the Chinese coast and ultimately giving Britain control what is now Hong Kong.

It is the consumption of tea by the British, and later the thirst for ready-to drink and iced tea by Americans, that fueled cultivation of tea not just in India but into Africa and then South America by some of the largest tea producers in world. While China and Japan may produce more tea, this is mainly for domestic consumption rather than export.

A Brief Timeline of Tea by Dominion Tea

Since tea cannot be commercially grown in every country and it continues to be the second most consumed beverage on the planet, I suspect it will remain a factor in international relations. I can only hope that it brings more peaceful relationships in the future. Do you think it can?

Let us know by commenting here, or sharing on Twitter or Facebook.

– Hillary

Works Cited

Greenberg, M. (1951). British Trade and the Opening of China, 1800-42. In M. Greenberg, British Trade and the Opening of China, 1800-42 (p. 113). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

UK Tea Council. (2014, January 5). Tea – A Brief History of the Nation’s Favourite Beverage. Retrieved from UK Tea Council Web site: http://www.tea.co.uk/tea-a-brief-history-of-the-nations-favourite-beverage