Tea or Coffee?

Which is your favorite? I grew up in a coffee-drinking household—which is probably why my character all drink coffee. I never acquired a taste for tea, except as an occasional alternative or in its iced form.

Tea’s roots as a beverage are ancient—literally. Legend has it that, in 2737 BC, a green tea leaf fell into Chinese Emperor Shen Nung’s cup of hot water, he decided to drink it—and loved it. Tea went from China to Japan, then to Europe via Dutch traders.

In 1610AD, The Dutch East India Company imported the first shipments of Chinese tea to Western shores, marketing it to rich people as an exotic medicinal drink but it really caught on. Only forty or so years later, tea parties became all the rage among Western women. 

When King Charles II married Catherine Braganza of Portugal, a huge fan of tea, their subjects started drinking so much tea that alcohol consumption declined. When the English East India Company brought the gift of tea to the King and Queen a few years later, tea-drinking became a part of daily life in Britain.

The American colonies were a little late to the party. The first public sale of tea in Massachusetts wasn’t until 1690. But we made up for lost time. Tea became the most popular beverage in the American Colonies by 1765. Then there was that little dust-up about a tea tax in Boston.

Iced tea is claimed by the Americans, but it created by Englishman Richard Blechynden during a heat wave at the St Louis World Fair in 1904.

And those wonderful little individual bags tea drinkers in the U.S. love? New York tea importer Thomas Sullivan invented them accidentally when he sent tea samples to his clients in small silk bags. Since the clients didn’t know what to do with the bag, they just dunked the whole lot in hot water, bag and all.

So—what'll it be? Tea or Coffee?

Tracy