Do you know where the tea you drink comes from? Hot tea is a delicious and healthy drink that is popular in many European countries and all over the world.  Iced tea is more well-known in the United States though, and very few people know where it comes from.

Learn more about the history of hot tea and the origins of refreshing iced tea. We hope you will enjoy these drinks and enjoy them often. 

Indigenous to China, Tibet and Northern India, the tea plant (camellia sinensis) is a shrubby evergreen. Left alone, it grows to 30 feet and bears fragrant white flowers. Tea planters prune it to three to five feet for convenience in harvesting. The best teas are grown in mountains to 6,000 feet. Perfect conditions for the flavor and quality include an average shade temperature of 65 degrees and well-distributed rainfall of 100 inches a year, with long intervals of sun in-between flowers. Now, 3/4 of the world’s tea comes from India and Shri Lanka. It also grows in Java and Formosa, as well as in China and Tibet.

The delightful beverage is made from the dried leaves and has plenty of health benefits.

But what about iced tea, you may ask. Where does it come from?

Iced tea was created in Americanearly 100 years ago so perhaps it is fitting that America is the only country where the majority of tea is enjoyed cool. In fact, iced tea was invented because visitors to the 1904 St. Louis World’s Fair were not interested in drinking hot tea on a hot summer day. The hot tea was getting a cool reception. Therefore quick thinking English merchant Richard Blechynden added ice, and the rest is history.

today 80% of the 2,2 billion gallons of tea consumed by Americans each year is served cold. Iced tea is so popular in America that each year June is celebrated as National Iced Tea Month.

Where legend ends and fact begins is uncertain, but it is generally accepted that the discovery of tea occurred in ancient china. The Chinese say it was their Emperor Shen-Nung in 2737 B.C. who first tasted tea. The story goes that while he was boiling his drinking water a few leaves from a wild tea bush accidentally fell into the water. The Emperor liked the delicate flavor they imparted to the water and so the art of tea making was born. According to Eeh Ya, an ancient Chinese dictionary dating back to 350 B.C., tea was cultivated commercially by the first century A.D.

In 1600 the Dutch opened tea plantations in Java and imported tea to Europe. Legend has it that the first tea to reach England arrived with a British admiral who had captured a Dutch ship and discovered the tea in its galley.

When the East India Company began importing tea to England, the English were … coffee drinkers. However, tea conquered the coffee habit in a few short years. For the first hundred years, tea was a novel treat only for the very rich. It wasn’t until the close of the 17th century, when imports were up to 20,000 pounds a year, that enough tea was available for almost everyone to have a cup a day.

In the 18th century, tea became an institution, partly with a boost from Queen Anne, who reigned from 1702 to 1714. She started the custom of drinking tea instead of ale for breakfast. She is also credited with originating the use of a large silver teapot instead of the small Chinese ceramic ones.

When the English taste for tea outdid coffee and made a dent in the ale trade, Parliament levied tax on tea. Despite the expense, tea was something the British could no longer live without.

Now tea is second only to water as the world’s most popular drink, as well as the least expensive.