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(bruce) wrote in message . com>...
>
> Black/Red tea is roughly 100 years old and was a sort of happy
> accident, it was not invented with anyone in mind. The story of
> modern day Keemun is that of an accidental change in the processing of
> green Keemun. Green tea has a much longer history in China than
> Black/Red and must be more wrapped up in their traditions and culture.
> The Book of Tea talks about which types of tea are favored in asia
> and why, it's a very interesting book, highly reccomeded!
>
>
> I think the first tea Europeans drank was green but when given the
> choice the European culture with it's different taste preferences must
> have been really taken with Red/Black tea. Then in the ninteenth
> century when India really took off as a tea growing region the
> Europeans were able to process tea however they wanted, (the
> processing of tea had been unknown to the Europeans for a long time)
> black tea was their main choice.

Thank you for the answer. Now I have checked the matter in John C.
Evan's excellent book, "Tea in China: The History of China's National
Drink", and it looks like black/red tea has been around at least in
the past five hundred years. According this source, black/red tea was
developed sometime during the Ming Dinasty (1368-1644), explicitly for
export purposes. It was the same time when the use of tea bricks was
replaced by loose tea as we know it today. Loose tea compared to brick
tea traveled badly and was easily spoiled. Ming teamen developed the
process of fermenting the leaves, thus producing a more robust and
rot-proof tea that they called red tea. This tea was only ment to be
exported to the "barbarian lands", like Manchuria, the Chinese
themself disdained black tea.

In 1644 the Manchus came to power in China. They preferred to drink
black tea with milk, and this habit spred quickly to Europe, together
with the first shipments of tea. From the above follows that the
Europeans most probably received black/red tea from China.

Gyorgy

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