Tea is synonymous with the British way of life. Brits have been drinking the beverage in its various forms for 350 years and now consume 100 million cups of tea per day. That amounts to a staggering 36 billion cups per year.
But the origins of tea can be traced back to China. According to legend, in 2737 BC Chinese emperor Shen Nung was sitting beneath a tree while his servant boiled drinking water, when leaves from the tree blew into the water. Shen Nung, a renowned herbalist, tried the accidental infusion, which became known as tea.
Fast forward to 2024 and the Chinese influence on tea drinking in the UK is alive and well. Mei Leaf teahouse in Camden Town, London, is a popular tea drinking spot, and has been serving Londoners and tea aficionados since it opened its doors in 2006.
CGTN Europe visited Mei Leaf and spent the afternoon with its owner, Don Mei, to find out more about tea's Chinese origins, the different types of tea available to customers and, most importantly, the secret to making the perfect cup.
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Mei and his team explore the Chinese mountains to find the most delicious teas on the planet to serve his loyal band of tea aficionados. /CGTN.
Six types of tea
Most of us buy our tea bags from supermarkets and dunk them in boiling water from the kettle for a couple of minutes before taking a satisfying sip. But step inside the doors of Mei Leaf, and you'll enjoy a very different tea drinking experience.
Mei and his team scour China and the mountains of the Far East to find the most delicious teas on the planet. "There are six different types of tea," he explains. They all come from the tea plant. And the way that you define a tea type is how it's produced.
"Theoretically, you could take any tea plant and you could produce any type of tea. It's what humans do after picking that decides the type of tea, not the actual bush itself. The six different types of tea are white, green, yellow, oolong, black and post-fermented tea."
A large cabinet inside Mei Leaf reveals hundreds of tea cakes - that is, tea encased in circular packaging that makes it easy for tea to be transported and stored. Most of these teas are post-fermented, which means the leaves have been exposed to a distinct ageing process by subjecting them to microbial activity and environmental conditions, resulting in a unique taste.
Teahouse owner Don Mei teaches CGTN about the Chinese origins of tea, the meditative effects of certain brews and the secret to making the perfect cup. /CGTN
Tea drunk and tea high
If you thought taste was the ultimate definition of a good cup of tea, you'd be wrong. Many tea drinkers judge their favorite teas not on their taste, but how the tea makes them feel after its consumption. This is often referred to as being tea drunk or tea high.
"Tea has many different compounds that are healthful, but they're also psychoactive," says Mei. "So you've got lots of different chemicals like theanine and catechins, etc, which actually stimulate your endocannabinoid system. So you can have distinct effects for different types of teas.
"A lot of people are looking for that and, in fact, in China, the key quality marker of tea is not taste and aroma - it's aftertaste and effect. How the tea makes you feel afterwards is very high up, if not the top marker for quality of tea."
There are a number of different teas that are popular for delivering this post-drink effect. "One of them is shade-grown Kyo Kuro," says Mei. "This is Japanese, it has a really interesting sort of umami deep quality to it. When you smell it, what you're smelling is theanine, an amino acid that's similar in the mouth to savory.
"What happens is that it crosses your blood brain barrier really quickly. It changes your dopamine levels and it stimulates alpha brainwave activity, which is the same sort of active brain activity as a meditative state."
Luminary Misfit is a form of tea that creates a meditative post-drink effect. /CGTN
How to make the perfect cup
Large teapots are commonplace in the kitchen cupboards of British tea drinkers. But have they been getting their tea-making technique wrong? Mei says the optimum way to make tea involves using a special tiny teapot, approximately a quarter the size of a traditional British pot.
"Most people brew their tea wrong - or at least not to its optimum," says Mei. "This Gong Fu way of brewing is one of the best ways to get the most flavor and effect out of your tea. This style of brewing involves taking smaller containers, stuffing it full of leaves and brewing multiple infusions - so you're brewing many, many times.
"And what you're doing, because you've got a lot of leaf in a small amount of water, you're making really, really rich brews, which means that your tea shrinks down as well. So you're essentially drinking tea shots. That means you'll have very rich flavorful brews, more of the energy and that tea drunken effect."
More than 350 years after the first cup of tea was sipped on British soil, the Chinese origins of this much loved beverage are influencing a new generation of tea drinkers to select, brew and enjoy the perfect cuppa.
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