Sugar and Tea
For the true tea connoisseur, adding sugar to tea is a heresy as it alters the liquor enormously.
The habit of adding sugar to tea didn't come from China. It appeared in the late 17th century in Britain and is thought to have originated as a way to combat the astringency of some of the green teas that were being imported. By the late 18th century, British tea drinkers were consuming 10 times more sugar then their european counterparts. Everywhere the British went to build their empire, the habit traveled with them i.e. America, Africa, Arabia (hence the quantities of sugar that Arabs put in their mint tea).
It is however a habit to unlearn if you truly want to enjoy the fabulous variety of aromas and flavours that tea has to offer.
There are four things that can harm tea: air, light, moisture, or excessive heat. Therefore to best protect your tea, store it in an air-tight, lightproof container away from moisture or heat. The foil bags that loose tea comes in, when you buy it at a good Tea shop, are good temporary storage containers. For longer term storage, the ideal container for Tea is the simple metal caddie with a narrow opening at the top (as illustrated).
All tea comes from a single plant, the "Camellia sinensis", an evergreen shrub that may grow up to 18 meters in the wild. When cultivated for harvest the tea bushes are kept to a height of about 1 meter (by constant picking). There are over 3000 varieties of tea each with its own specific characteristics. The naming and growing of teas has many similarities to wine. Just as Bordeaux wine is named after the Bordeaux region in France, Assam is named after the Assam region in India, and Keemun is named after the Keemun region of China. Like wine, tea comes from one bush, and where the tea is grown, the climate, soil conditions, and how the tea is processed, determines the flavor characteristics of the tea.