Tea culture

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Tea culture is the set of practices — preparation methods, vessels, etiquette, social settings and meanings — that grew up around the drink and that differ sharply between the societies that adopted it. In China it developed from medicinal and monastic use into a connoisseurship of leaf, water and vessel; in Tibet it became a caloric staple churned with butter and salt; in Japan it became a codified ceremony; in Britain it became first an elite luxury, then, after duties fell, an everyday working-class drink taken with milk and sugar. The British form is the youngest of these and is inseparable from two other colonial commodities, Caribbean sugar and Indian tea. Tea culture is a practice, not a place, and has no single point of origin.

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