British Tea Characteristics

The first tea to arrive in England from China was green tea in the seventeenth century. The strong black tea that is now associated with English tea drinking is a legacy of British tea production in colonial India in the nineteenth century.

By the early nineteenth century, the British had developed such a taste for tea that they knew they had to expand their source beyond China. In the 1820s, the British East India Company, already established in colonial India, began extensive production in Assam using a local tea variety. The new enterprise flourished, delivering not only a steady supply of tea at a lower price to the home market but also a patriotic product for the empire.