Everything to do with Britain appears personable and regal. So is polo, so is English whisky, and, of course, the world-famous British black tea is more charming and gentlemanly. A cup of British black tea with rich taste and deep color has been poured into countless royal families and nobles, adding a charming color to the British black tea culture.

Speaking of British black tea, many people stubbornly believe that its birthplace is in England on the European continent, but in fact it is produced in China, thousands of miles away. You won’t find the world-famous British black tea plantations in the UK. This is because of the British love for black tea and a long drinking tradition, so that the black tea originating in China and grown in India is prefixed with “British”, so the name “British black tea” has been misunderstood by many people to this day.

The reason why black tea has become a worldwide beverage is closely related to the Sui and Tang Dynasties of China and the expansion of the British Empire. In the 5th century AD, Chinese tea was shipped to Turkey, and since the Sui and Tang dynasties, the exchanges between China and the West have not been interrupted. Although the trade in tea has been around for a long time, China at that time only exported tea, not tea seeds.

By the 1780s, an English tree-planter-gatherer named Robert Fu had put tea seeds in a portable incubator made of special glass, smuggled them on a ship bound for India, and cultivated them in India. With more than 100,000 tea saplings, such a large-scale tea garden appeared. The black tea it produces has been shipped to the UK for sale. Due to long-distance trafficking and small quantities, the value of black tea doubled after it arrived in the UK. Only wealthy British aristocrats could taste this precious and luxurious “Indian black tea”, which gradually formed the black tea culture in the UK.

At that time, the British Empire, with its strong national strength and advanced trade methods, planted tea trees in more than 50 countries around the world, and promoted tea as an international beverage. The birth of black tea solves the problem that tea loses its fragrance and taste due to long-distance transportation. The Qing Dynasty was the most prosperous period of China’s tea trade.

At that time, due to the increasing demand for black tea from the British and even European royal families, European merchant ships loaded with tea sailed all over the world. In the heyday of world tea trade, 60% of China’s exports were black tea.

Later, European countries such as Britain and France began to buy tea from regions such as India and Ceylon. After years of honing and the precipitation of time, to this day, the finest black tea produced in the two famous producing areas in India has long become the best “British black tea” in the world.