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According to John P. Beilenson in his book
The Book of Tea, thousands of years ago the Chinese Emperor Shen Nung was notorious for vigilantly boiling all his drinking water. The Emperor observed that boiling water tended to make people healthier, although he did not know why.
While waiting for his water to boil one day, a few leaves from a branch burning in his fire landed in it. The Emperor drank the concoction and liked the taste. After identifying the plant from which the leaves came, he ordered his servants to cultivate more of them in his garden. This shrub, of course, was the wild tea plant.
Tea may have been first referenced in written material in a 5th century B.C. poem entitled “The Lament of the Discarded Wife.” In this poem, Confucius referred to a plant that is now generally assumed to be tea. However, the first officially confirmed written record of tea is found in the biography of a Chinese government official who died in 273 A.D.
It wasn’t until 1610, when the Dutch were the first to import it from China, that tea arrived in Europe. In the Netherlands it often cost the equivalent of $100 per pound. Hostesses from the best families in Holland had tea parties, where 50 or more cups were served to each guest along with cakes and pipe tobacco for smoking. At these flamboyant gatherings, people added sugar and saffron to their tea, while loudly sipping from the saucer.
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