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Food & Drink
The true story behind England’s tea obsession
A stiff upper lip and an almost genetic love of tea
are what makes the English English. Except that the latter was actually
influenced by a Portuguese woman.
By Billie
Cohen
28 August
2017
http://www.bbc.com/travel/story/20170823-the-true-story-behind-englands-tea-obsession
Imagine the
most English-English person you can think of. Now I’m fairly certain that no
matter what picture you just conjured up, that person comes complete with a
stiff upper lip and a cup of tea in their hand. Because that’s what the English
do. They carry on and they drink tea. Tea is so utterly English, such an
ingrained part of the culture, that it’s also ingrained in how everyone else
around the world perceives that culture.
Tea is such
an ingrained part of the culture, that it’s also ingrained in how everyone else
around the world perceives that culture
And while
it’s fairly common knowledge that Westerners have China to thank for the
original cultivation of the tannic brew, it’s far less known that it was the
Portuguese who inspired its popularity in England – in particular, one
Portuguese woman. Think about that next time you’re sipping steaming oolong
from delicate mugs at the Ritz, or standing under the portrait of Earl Grey in
the Victoria & Albert Museum.
Few people know that it was the Portuguese who
inspired tea’s popularity in England
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Travel back
in time to 1662, when Catherine of Braganza (daughter of Portugal’s King John
IV) won the hand of England’s newly restored monarch, King Charles II, with the
help of a very large dowry that included money, spices, treasures and the
lucrative ports of Tangiers and Bombay. This hookup made her one very important
lady: the Queen of England, Scotland and Ireland.
When she
relocated up north to join King Charles, she is said to have packed loose-leaf
tea as part of her personal belongings; it would also have likely been part of
her dowry. A fun legend has it that the crates were marked Transporte de Ervas
Aromaticas (Transport of Aromatic Herbs) – later abbreviated to T.E.A.
That last
bit probably isn’t true (etymologists believe the word ‘tea’ came from a
transliteration of a Chinese character), but what is for sure is that tea was
already popular among the aristocracy of Portugal due to the country’s direct
trade line to China via its colony in Macau, first settled in the mid-1500s
(visit today to sample the other end of this culinary exchange, the Portuguese
pastéis de nata, aka egg custard tarts).
)
When
Catherine arrived in England, tea was being consumed there only as a medicine,
supposedly invigorating the body and keeping the spleen free of obstructions.
But since the young queen was used to sipping the pick-me-up as part of her
daily routine, she no doubt continued her habit, making it popular as a social
beverage rather than as a health tonic.
Everything
from Catherine's clothes to her furniture became the source of court talk
“When
Catherine married Charles, she was the focus of attention – everything from her
clothes to her furniture became the source of court talk,” said Sarah-Beth
Watkins, author of Catherine of Braganza: Charles II's Restoration Queen. “Her
regular drinking of tea encouraged others to drink it. Ladies flocked to copy
her and be a part of her circle.”
Hot poet of
the time, Edmund Waller, even wrote a birthday ode to her shortly after her
arrival, which forever linked the queen and Portugal with the fashionable
status of tea in England. He wrote:
“The best
of Queens, and best of herbs, we owe
To that
bold nation, which the way did show
To the fair
region where the sun doth rise,
Whose rich
productions we so justly prize.”
To be fair,
tea could be found in England before Catherine arrived, but it wasn’t very
popular. “Waller is recorded drinking tea in 1657, which is a whole six years
before Catherine turns up,” said Markman Ellis, professor of 18th-Century
Studies at Queen Mary, University of London, and co-author of Empire of Tea:
The Asian Leaf that Conquered the World. “He is a well-known aficionado for
tea, which is unusual because it was so expensive and everyone was drinking
coffee at this time.”
The reason
for the cost was threefold: England had no direct trade with China; tea from
India wasn’t around yet; and the small quantities that the Dutch were importing
were sold at a very high premium.
“It was
very expensive because it came from China and it was taxed very heavily,”
explained Jane Pettigrew, author of A Social History of Tea, winner of the 2014
World Tea Awards’ Best Tea Educator and director of studies at UK Tea Academy.
Indeed it
was so pricey (a pound went for as much as a working-class citizen made in a
year), that, according to Ellis, “it ruled out anyone but the most elite and
wealthiest sectors of society. So tea became associated with elite women’s
sociability around the royal court, of which Catherine was the most famous
emblem.”
And what
happens with famous people? Non-famous people imitate them. “When the queen
does something, everyone wants to follow suit, so very, very gradually by the
end of the 17th Century, the aristocracy had started sipping small amounts of
tea,” Pettrigrew said.
Of course,
the upper class didn’t invent the ritual of tea-drinking themselves – they were
imitators too. As Pettigrew recounted, “Until tea arrived with the Dutch, we
[the English] didn’t know anything about tea. No sugar spoons, no cups, no tea
kettles (only kitchen kettles), so we did what always happens: we copied the
entire ritual from China. We imported [Chinese] tiny porcelain tea bowls, the
saucers, the dishes for sugar, the small teapots.”
Catherine’s
home country had a hand in in popularising this aspect of the tea experience,
too. “Portugal was one of the routes [by which] porcelain got to Europe,” Ellis
noted. “It was very expensive and very beautiful, and one of the things that
made tea drinking attractive was all the pretty stuff that went with it, like
having the latest iPhone.”
Since it
was so prized, porcelain was probably part of Catherine’s dowry, and, like
other aristocratic ladies, she would have accrued many gorgeous trappings to
pad out her tea sessions once she was living in England. Pettigrew explained,
“She started it as an aristocratic habit in her palaces – very posh, very upper
class, and so the ceremony that arrived from China was immediately associated
with fine living. As soon as tea arrived, it had very strong connections to
feminine women and very big houses, I suppose through Catherine, because the
porcelain cost huge amounts of money. The poor had to make due with
earthenware. So everything that was expensive had to do with the aristocracy.
It’s the same as today: You buy expensive things to show how important you
are.”
Eventually
the lower classes transformed tea into a more egalitarian drink, but today,
travellers to London can still experience the aristocratic pomp and
circumstance at upscale hotels’ afternoon tea services, most notably at the
Langham Hotel’s Palm Court in London (which claims to be the birthplace of
afternoon tea), the famed Ritz London and Claridge’s.
You can
find fancy tea events in Portugal too, but even there, the link to Queen
Catherine is not well known. In the historic municipality of Sintra, though,
one hotel is trying to change that. At the Tivoli Palácio de Seteais Sintra
Hotel, general manager Mario Custódio is about to launch a special afternoon
tea themed after Catherine in October. “In school we don’t get this [history],”
Custódio said. “I had no idea. Even the Portuguese don’t know this.”
The area of
Sintra, spread across lush green mountains about 30 minutes outside Lisbon, is
a Unesco World Heritage Site, noted for its concentrated displays of European
romantic architecture. The Seteais Palace, built in the 1780s by Dutch consul
Daniel Gildemeester, is just one of several ornate, whimsical estate homes that
dot the Sintra landscape; wedding-cake follies overlooking intricate, sprawling
gardens and parks. Queen Catherine never lived here, but the concentration of
old wealth and must-see mansions makes it the perfect place to reflect on what
the lives of Portuguese nobility used to be like. You can easily imagine
opulently dressed noblewomen gathering in opulently draped drawing rooms,
clinking teacups and swapping news and gossip.
For
Custódio, bringing these little-known bits of history to life is what makes the
travel experience special and personal for visitors. “I’m trying to [present]
these things that are very unknown because that is luxury today,” he said.
If Queen
Catherine gave you a gift of marmalade, she didn’t think that much of you
The daily
tea service (open only to hotel guests), will highlight aspects of the
Portuguese connection to this genteel tradition. For instance, Custódio is
working with a historian to serve the type of tea Catherine would have drank
(Ellis thinks it’s most likely a green tea, as no tea came out of India until
the 1830s, long after she’d passed away). Marmalade will also be part of the
menu, as that’s another part of the Catherine of Braganza mythology that
Custódio has stumbled across in his research. The tale goes that, since some of
the best oranges in the world come from Portugal, Catherine had them shipped
over to her new English home regularly. The ones that didn’t make the journey
in top condition were turned into marmalade. Of course, whole oranges were a
more prized snack, so if Queen Catherine gave you a gift of marmalade instead
of oranges, it meant she didn’t think that much of you.
The spread
at the Seteais Palace will come with no such judgments. Custódio is simply
hoping that by mingling with visitors during the themed tea service and by
gifting them with a small book – complete with QR codes for more photos,
historical facts and fun stories – he’ll be helping to share some of the
culture and colour of his home and reinforce the long-term influence of a
little-known transplant queen.
“We
Portuguese want to believe that Catarina was responsible for the tea. I
don’t want this history to die.”
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