China
Tea was first cultivated in China. Legend has it that Shen Nong, the second emperor of China, discovered tea when some leaves fell into his pot circa 2700 BCE. He found the resulting infusion pleasing and invigorating. Historical records confirm that tea was cultivated in Yunnan province and given as tribute to Chinese emperors as early as of 1066 BCE. This tea was green tea as the process for producing black and oolong teas was not invented until relatively recently. For a long time, tea has been the subject of great scholarship. Lu Yu, Chinese scholar of the seventh century common era, penned its first great work The Classic of Tea (Ch’a Ching). The work details the origins of tea, tea cultivation, tea preparation and the appreciation of tea. It is not a mere industrial cookbook or medical desk reference, but an evocation of the spiritual nature of tea and related ceremony.

Tea spread from the southern regions of China north during the Tang Dynasty. Most of this tea was brick tea and had to be roasted before it could be infused. The following Song Dynasty saw new developments in tea which was increasingly an infusion of whipped powdered tea. Song tea preparation, while not in favor in China today, has been preserved in the Japanese Tea Ceremony codified by Sen-no Rikyu. Mongol conquest of China saw the destruction and rebirth of much of China’s tea culture as the invaders and new rulers of the middle kingdom did not favor tea prepared in the Tang or Song style. It is at this time that the green teas started to be prepared as they are today with loose leaves steeped in near boiling water became the dominant style. In the sixteenth century under the Qing Dynasty, the fermented" or oxidized black and oolong teas start to emerge primarily as product to export to the West.

Tea in the West
Dutch traders were the first Europeans to encounter tea and bring it back to the west. Their trading empire based in Batavia brought them into contact with the Chinese. The tea that they brought home was black tea which the Chinese refused to drink as it was fit only for white devils. Because the Dutch had no experience with tea, they consumed it not as a social beverage, but a medicinal one. The fashion of drinking tea was eventually picked up by various nobility in France, and tea became wildly popular for about half a century. The British, who are so often thought synonymous with tea consumption were some of the last in Europe to catch on to this new eastern product. Over the course of a single century, however, tea became the drink favored and accessible not just by the British elite, but also by the common man.

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