119 Fun Facts About Tea

Tea is brewed from the leaves of which plant species?

Camellia sinensis is the one; the others are yerba mate, coffee and rooibos, none of which is technically tea.

After plain drinking water, which is the most widely consumed beverage in the world?

Global production reached 29.8 million tonnes in 2022, nearly half of it from China.

Chinese legend credits the discovery of tea in 2737 BC to which mythical emperor?

Shennong, the legendary Divine Farmer, is said to have discovered tea in 2737 BC when leaves blew into his pot of boiling water.

The Classic of Tea, an eighth-century treatise on tea and its preparation, was written by whom?

Lu Yu wrote The Classic of Tea (Cha Jing) around 760 AD, describing how tea plants were grown, leaves processed and the drink prepared.

Which English diarist recorded drinking his first cup of tea in September 1660?

Samuel Pepys wrote on 25 September 1660 that he 'did send for a cup of tee (a China drink) of which I never had drank before'.

Which princess brought the tea-drinking habit to the English court when she married Charles II in 1662?

Catherine of Braganza, the Portuguese wife of Charles II, arrived in 1662 already fond of tea and made it fashionable at the English court.

'Tea' reached English in the 17th century via the Dutch from which variety of Chinese?

The Dutch traded at Fujian and Taiwan, where Min Chinese speakers said 'te'; English adopted that form, while 'cha' had arrived earlier via the Portuguese.

Which type of tea is wilted, bruised and only partially oxidized?

Oolong is partially oxidized, anywhere from about 8 to 85 percent; its Chinese name wulong means 'black dragon'.

Which country led global tea production in 2022 with roughly 49 percent of the world's 29.8 million tonnes?

China grows about half; India adds 20 percent, and a handful of countries including Sri Lanka account for about 81 percent of world production.

Turkish tea is traditionally served in small glasses of what shape, called ince belli or 'slim-waisted'?

Most of it is Rize tea from the Black Sea coast, brewed in a stacked two-pot caydanlik.

As of 2016, which country was the world's second-biggest per-capita consumer of tea?

The Irish average works out to between 2.7 and 4 kilograms per person a year.

Roughly what share of tea's dry weight is caffeine?

Caffeine makes up about 3% of tea's dry weight, which works out to between 30 and 90 milligrams in a 250-millilitre cup.

Which New York tea importer popularized tea bags around 1908 by shipping samples in small silk pouches?

Thomas Sullivan's silk sample pouches of 1908 popularized the idea, though Milwaukee's Roberta Lawson and Mary McLaren had patented a 'Tea Leaf Holder' in 1903.

Which brand introduced tea bags to the United Kingdom in 1953?

PG Tips answered decades later with the pyramid bag in 1997.

In 1848 the East India Company sent which Scottish botanist to China to bring tea plants back to India?

Robert Fortune travelled disguised as a Chinese merchant and shipped the plants to India in Wardian cases.

Darjeeling tea, marketed as the 'Champagne of teas', is grown in the hills of which Indian state?

West Bengal's Darjeeling and Kalimpong districts grow it, and in 2004 it became India's first product with geographical indication protection under the WTO's TRIPS agreement.

The Tea Board of India recognizes how many estates as producers of authentic Darjeeling tea?

The Tea Board recognises 87 gardens, which between them cover about 17,500 hectares at 600 to 2,000 metres above sea level.

Which is the world's largest tea-growing region by production, sitting in the Brahmaputra valley?

Assam's gardens long ran on 'Tea Garden Time', an hour ahead of Indian Standard Time, a leftover from British rule.

Which country was the world's largest exporter of black tea in 2018?

Kenya exported more black tea than any other country in 2018; tea was first planted there at Limuru in 1903, and most is sold at the Mombasa auction.

On December 16, 1773, colonists disguised as Mohawks dumped East India Company tea into which harbor?

Boston Harbor was the target; about 92,000 pounds of East India Company tea, worth around 9,659 pounds sterling, went into the water.

Which May 1773 act gave the East India Company a monopoly and set off the Massachusetts protest?

The Tea Act of 10 May 1773 let the East India Company ship tea directly to the colonies, undercutting smugglers while keeping the Townshend tea duty.

Britain countered its trade deficit with China using which narcotic, sparking an 1839 war?

Opium grown in British India was sold into China to balance the silver spent on tea; Chinese seizure of opium at Canton triggered the First Opium War in 1839.

The tea clipper Cutty Sark, built in 1869, takes its name from a character in a poem by whom?

Robert Burns's 'Tam o' Shanter' supplies the name, the witch Nannie's short shirt; launched in 1869 as the Suez Canal opened, she later hauled Australian wool.

Afternoon tea is usually credited to Anna, the seventh Duchess of which title, in the 1840s?

Anna Russell, Duchess of Bedford, wanted something to bridge the gap between a light lunch and a dinner that could come as late as eight o'clock.

The hearty working-class evening meal called 'high tea' got its name from what?

It was the hearty working-class evening meal; the dainty afternoon version was 'low tea'.

A traditional West Country tea centres on scones served with jam and what?

Clotted cream is the West Country staple; Devon spreads the cream on first and Cornwall the jam, and neither county will let it go.

Earl Grey tea is a black tea flavoured with the oil of which citrus fruit?

Bergamot oil defines it; Twinings' Lady Grey adds cornflower and Seville orange to the blend.

Thomas Twining opened Britain's first known tea room in 1706 at No. 216 on which London street?

Twinings opened at 216 Strand in 1706 and has traded from that address for over three centuries; its 1787 logo is claimed as the world's oldest in continuous use.

In which country did Glasgow grocer Thomas Lipton buy tea gardens in 1890?

Lipton bought estates in Ceylon (Sri Lanka) in 1890 to sell tea 'direct from the tea garden to the tea pot'; the yellow pack with the red shield dates from the same year.

Matcha is a finely ground powder of green tea leaves that have been grown how before harvest?

Matcha comes from leaves grown in the shade for several weeks before harvest, which boosts chlorophyll and theanine; the powder is whisked with a bamboo chasen.

Which monk brought powdered tea from China to Japan around 1191, having encountered it in temples there?

Eisai, founder of Rinzai Zen in Japan, returned from China in 1191 with tea seeds; his disciple Myoe planted tea at Uji, near Kyoto, which became Japan's foremost tea region.

The Japanese term chanoyu, used for the tea ceremony, literally means what?

Chanoyu is written with the characters for tea and hot water joined by 'no', so it reads 'hot water for tea'; the broader term chado means 'way of tea'.

What is the deliberately small entrance door of a traditional Japanese tea house called?

The nijiriguchi, a crawl-in entrance well under a metre high, makes every guest stoop; the ideal tea room beyond it is just four and a half tatami mats.

Japanese green teas are mostly steamed; Chinese green teas are typically processed how?

Chinese greens are typically pan-fired in a hot wok to halt oxidation, giving toasty, nutty notes; steaming gives Japanese teas a sweeter, grassier flavour.

Gunpowder tea gets its name because each leaf is rolled into what?

Gunpowder tea's leaves are rolled into small pellets that resemble grains of black powder and unfurl when brewed; its Chinese name zhucha means 'pearl tea'.

Tieguanyin, the 'Iron Goddess of Mercy' oolong, comes from which Chinese province?

Tieguanyin is an oolong from Anxi County in Fujian province; the name honours Guanyin, the Buddhist bodhisattva of mercy.

Da Hong Pao, one of the world's priciest teas, is a rock tea from which mountain range?

Da Hong Pao, 'Big Red Robe', grows on the cliffs of the Wuyi Mountains in Fujian, where only six original mother trees survive.

Bubble tea, with its chewy tapioca pearls, originated in the 1980s in which place?

Taiwan: Chun Shui Tang in Taichung and Hanlin Tea Room in Tainan both claim to have invented the drink in the 1980s.

The word 'boba', for the pearls in bubble tea, began as a nickname for an actress from where?

'Boba' was a Hong Kong nickname for actress Amy Yip, and Taiwanese vendors borrowed it for the large tapioca pearls in the late 1980s.

Kashmiri noon chai owes its pink colour to which ingredient?

Noon chai's pink hue comes from baking soda: the alkali reacts with green tea leaves as the brew is aerated, and salt rather than sugar finishes it.

Iced tea's popularity surged after Richard Blechynden served it at the 1904 World's Fair in which US city?

St. Louis got the credit for Blechynden's free samples at the Louisiana Purchase Exposition, though printed iced-tea recipes go back to the 1870s.

Roughly what share of all tea consumed in the United States is iced?

About 85 percent of tea drunk in the United States is iced, typically sweetened in the South; the Arnold Palmer mixes it half-and-half with lemonade.

Tibetan po cha is tea churned with salt and butter from which animal?

Po cha is churned from strong tea, salt and yak butter; a Tibetan host refills the bowl after every sip, so a guest leaves it full when finished.

Which country took up tea after losing Yemen and led per-head tea drinking in 2016?

Turkish tea is brewed in a two-tier caydanlik and poured into 'slim-waisted' ince belli glasses.

Since the 18th century, which Russian city has been the main centre of samovar production?

Tula, south of Moscow, has made samovars since the 1770s; a small pot on top brews a strong concentrate called zavarka, diluted with hot water from the urn.

Hong Kong's 'silk stocking' milk tea gets its name from the colour of what?

Hongkongers make it with evaporated milk, and the technique was declared intangible cultural heritage in 2017.

Teh tarik, Malaysia's national drink, is made frothy by doing what?

The name means 'pulled tea', and it is a strong black tea with condensed milk served at Indian Muslim mamak stalls.

Yerba mate, drunk from a gourd through a bombilla straw, comes from a plant in which genus?

Yerba mate is Ilex paraguariensis, a species of holly; the Guarani were the first to cultivate it, and Brazil and Argentina are the main producers.

The Kangra Valley, a tea region since the mid-19th century, lies in which Indian state?

Kangra Valley, in the foothills of the Dhauladhar range in Himachal Pradesh, has grown tea since the British planted it in the mid-19th century.

What sits on the bottom tier of a traditional afternoon tea stand?

Finger sandwiches go on the bottom tier, scones in the middle and small cakes on top; the accepted order is to work up the stand.

Between which hours was afternoon tea originally eaten?

Afternoon tea was taken between four and five o'clock, bridging the gap before a fashionable dinner served at eight or later.

What is the other name for afternoon tea?

Low tea is afternoon tea, named for the low parlour tables it was taken at, not for social standing.

Which social group adopted high tea in the 1860s and 1870s?

Working people took up high tea in the 1860s and 1870s as a hearty meal after the day's labour, while afternoon tea belonged to the upper and middle classes.

What does a traditional high tea begin with?

A savoury dish comes first, typically cold cuts such as ham salad or a hot plate, with bread, butter, jam and cakes following.

Which pink-and-yellow checked cake, wrapped in marzipan, is an afternoon-tea classic?

Battenberg cake is a pink-and-yellow checked sponge wrapped in marzipan, popularly said to mark the 1884 marriage of Princess Victoria to Prince Louis of Battenberg.

How is a traditional cucumber sandwich made?

The traditional cucumber sandwich uses thinly buttered crustless white bread with paper-thin cucumber slices, and is the definitive finger sandwich of the tea table.

In which Oscar Wilde play does host Algernon eat every cucumber sandwich before Lady Bracknell arrives for tea?

The Importance of Being Earnest has Algernon claim there were no cucumbers in the market, not even for ready money, and his butler backs up the lie.

Which riddle does the Hatter ask at the tea table in Alice's Adventures in Wonderland?

'Why is a raven like a writing-desk?' had no answer in the original text; Carroll supplied one in an 1896 preface after readers wrote in, that it 'can produce a few notes'.

In Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, who joins the Hatter and Alice at the mad tea party?

The March Hare and the Dormouse share the table in chapter seven, 'A Mad Tea-Party'; the Dormouse dozes throughout and ends up being stuffed into the teapot.

What is written on the hatband in Tenniel's original illustration of the Hatter?

The label reads 'In this style 10/6', a price ticket for ten shillings and sixpence; illustrators and film-makers have kept it ever since.

Where does the phrase 'mad as a hatter' come from?

Poisoning was common in the 19th-century hat trade. The phrase predates Lewis Carroll's books entirely.

How many chests of tea went into the water at the Boston Tea Party?

They were worth £9,659 at the time, well over a million pounds today. Three ships were boarded.

Which three ships were boarded during the Boston Tea Party?

The Dartmouth and Eleanor each carried 114 chests and the Beaver 112; the raiders who boarded them wore Mohawk disguises.

How did Parliament respond to the destruction of the tea?

They ended local self-government in Massachusetts and closed the port. The measures pushed the colonies towards war.

The earliest physical evidence of tea, found in 2016, came from the tomb of an emperor of which dynasty?

The mausoleum of Emperor Jing of Han, near Xi'an, held tea leaves showing the drink was taken as early as the 2nd century BCE.

In 1391 the Hongwu Emperor decreed that only what form of tea would be accepted as tribute?

By the end of the 16th century loose-leaf tea had entirely replaced the older cake and powder traditions.

Who was the first person to sell tea in London, at his house in Exchange Alley in 1657?

Thomas Garway, a tobacconist and coffee-man, sold tea at 16 to 50 shillings a pound and in 1660 advertised it as a cure for almost every ailment.

Which style of Japanese green tea did Soen Nagatani develop in 1738?

Sencha, whose name means roughly 'simmered tea', is brewed from whole steamed leaves, unlike the powdered matcha of the tea ceremony, and makes up most of Japan's output.

In which year was the Assam Company, India's first tea company, founded?

The Assam Company was formed in London in 1839, the first commercial tea company in India, taking over most of the government's experimental gardens in Assam.

Britain's record 'TV pickup', a power surge from kettles boiled for tea, came at the end of which broadcast?

A World Cup penalty shootout set the record: a 2,800-megawatt jump when England's 1990 semi-final against West Germany ended. Grid staff study the TV schedules to prepare for such surges.

Which physicist explained in 1926 why tea leaves gather at the centre of a stirred cup rather than the edge?

Albert Einstein explained the tea leaf paradox in a paper about why rivers wear away their banks. Friction slows the liquid near the bottom of the cup, setting up a flow that sweeps the leaves inward.

Since the Centurion of 1945, which British fighting machines have carried a built-in vessel for brewing tea?

Tanks gained the boiling vessel because crews used to climb out and brew up over petrol cookers made from empty fuel cans. Staying inside kept them safe and shortened their breaks.

Which Star Trek captain made hot Earl Grey tea a signature order from the starship's replicator?

Jean-Luc Picard asked for the blend so often in Star Trek: The Next Generation that the order became a catchphrase. It tied the tea to Patrick Stewart's character for decades afterwards.

Butterfly pea flower tea, a caffeine-free blue infusion, turns purple when which ingredient is added to the cup?

Lemon juice changes the colour because the petals' pigment reacts to acidity, so the drink behaves like a litmus test. The same deep blue petals have been used as a dye for centuries.

Which English novelist laid down eleven rules for the perfect brew in his 1946 essay 'A Nice Cup of Tea'?

George Orwell demanded strong tea, water at the boil, and tea poured before the milk so the amount of milk could be judged exactly. His essay first ran in a newspaper, the Evening Standard.

Tea tree oil comes not from the tea plant but from a Melaleuca tree native to which country?

Australia's tea tree is thought to owe its name to Captain James Cook, who brewed the leaves of one such shrub as a stand-in for tea. The oil is distilled from the leaves.

The drink English speakers call black tea is known in several East Asian languages by the name of which colour?

Red tea is the literal translation of the Chinese name hong cha. In Chinese tea culture the label 'black tea' belongs instead to aged, fermented teas such as pu'er.

In Judith Kerr's 1968 picture book, which uninvited animal joins Sophie and her mother for tea and eats everything?

A tiger invites himself in and finishes all the food and drink the family has. The Tiger Who Came to Tea went on to become one of the best-selling children's books of all time.

Kombucha is sweetened tea fermented by a rubbery 'mother' culture made of bacteria and which other microorganism?

Yeast in the culture turns the sugar into alcohol, which the bacteria then convert into the acids behind kombucha's sour tang. The culture is nicknamed a SCOBY.

Rooibos, a caffeine-free herbal infusion, is farmed only in the Cederberg region of which country?

South Africa protects the name rooibos by law, and the European Union grants it protected designation of origin status. Every crop comes from a single district north of Cape Town.

Earl Grey tea is thought to be named after Charles Grey, who held which British office in the early 1830s?

Prime Minister Charles Grey, the second Earl Grey, led the government that abolished slavery across the British Empire in 1833. The blend is only said to have been mixed for him.

During the Crimean War, British traders diverted Baltic-bound tea to which North African country famed for mint tea?

Morocco saw its tea imports quadruple in the twenty years after an 1856 trade treaty with Britain. Sweet mint tea, poured for guests in at least three glasses, became the mark of a good host.

Which actress voiced Mrs. Potts, the housekeeper turned teapot, in the 1991 animated Beauty and the Beast?

Angela Lansbury took the part after Julie Andrews turned it down. When the songwriters asked her to perform the title song, she doubted her voice suited the melody.

At the end of Beatrix Potter's The Tale of Peter Rabbit, which herbal tea does Peter's mother give him at bedtime?

Chamomile tea is Peter's cure for a stomach ache after raiding Mr. McGregor's garden. His well-behaved sisters get a proper supper with blackberries instead.

The spinning teacup ride Mad Tea Party was an opening-day attraction in 1955 at which theme park?

Disneyland based the ride on the Unbirthday Party scene in the animated Alice in Wonderland. For its first few months the cups spun on a bare platform, before the famous spiral was painted on.

The word chai, used for tea in Hindi, Russian, Persian and Arabic, spread overland along which trade route?

The Silk Road carried the spoken form 'cha' into Central Asia, where it picked up a Persian ending and became chai. Nations supplied by ship mostly ended up with words like 'tea' instead.

Which coffee chain bought the Tazo tea brand in 1999 and the Teavana tea shops in 2012?

Starbucks paid $620 million for Teavana, then announced in 2017 that it would close every one of the chain's shops. Tazo had cost it just $8.1 million.

Tea magnate Thomas Lipton challenged five times between 1899 and 1930, never winning, for which sailing trophy?

The America's Cup escaped all five of his yachts, each named Shamrock. His well-publicised defeats earned him a special trophy for the best of all losers and made his tea famous in the United States.

Which flower is brewed into the crimson drink that Mexicans call agua de Jamaica and Egyptians toast weddings with?

Hibiscus tea is made from the fleshy sepals around the roselle flower rather than from its petals. Egypt calls the drink karkadé and serves it hot or over ice.

The chasen, the whisk that froths matcha in a Japanese tea ceremony, is hand-carved from a single piece of what?

Bamboo is split by hand into the whisk's fine tines, which are so delicate that a special shaper called a kusenaoshi is used to keep their curve between uses.

Which patriot society, veterans of the Stamp Act protests, organised the 1773 dumping of tea in Massachusetts?

The Sons of Liberty boiled colonial anger down to one demand: no taxes without a voice in Parliament. Their branch in the port carried out the raid on the tea ships.

Japanese genmaicha, nicknamed 'popcorn tea', blends green tea with popped grains of what?

Brown rice was added as a cheap filler, which earned genmaicha its other nickname, the people's tea. A few grains burst in the heat and look like popcorn.

The smoky blend Russian Caravan is named after overland tea shipments once carried across Asia by which animals?

Camels hauled the tea across the Mongolian steppes, and tradition says the smoke of countless campfires along the way gave the cargo its flavour.

Tea clippers such as those in the Great Tea Race of 1866 were soon undercut by steamships using which new canal?

The Suez Canal opened in 1869 and gave steamships a route about 3,000 nautical miles shorter than the clippers' voyage round the Cape of Good Hope. The sailing ships' tea trade collapsed.

Which singer-songwriter's 1970 album Tea for the Tillerman includes the songs 'Wild World' and 'Father and Son'?

Cat Stevens, a former art student, also drew the picture on the album's cover. He recorded the songs across three studios in the spring and summer of 1970.

East Frisia, where locals drink about 300 litres of tea a head each year, is a coastal region of which country?

Germany as a whole prefers coffee, yet East Frisians drink more tea per head than any other people. They pour it over slow-melting rock sugar and never stir the cup.

In Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, the Hatter's quarrel with Time has frozen his tea party's clocks at what hour?

Six o'clock is tea-time, so the Hatter is condemned to a party that never ends. Time took offence after the Queen of Hearts accused the Hatter of murdering the time during a song.

Which British tea brand began dressing chimpanzees in human clothes for its television adverts in 1956?

PG Tips called its chimps the Tipps family and hired stars such as Peter Sellers to voice them. The animals came from Twycross Zoo, and the campaign ran until 2002.

The tea caddy, a lockable box for costly leaves, is believed to be named after the catty, an Asian unit of what?

Weight is what the catty measured, at about a pound and a third. Tea was so expensive when it first reached Europe that households kept it under lock and key.

Which word, borrowed from French, describes herbal infusions such as peppermint that contain no true tea leaves?

Tisane first entered English in the Middle Ages meaning a medicinal drink, then was borrowed a second time in the 20th century with its herbal sense. Most tisanes are naturally free of caffeine.

What is the term, built on the French word for 'cup', for telling fortunes from the tea leaves left after drinking?

Tasseography also covers reading coffee grounds and wine sediment. The practice followed tea and coffee along their trade routes, and coffee readings were reported in Ottoman palaces in the 1500s.

Which style of tea is named for the fine hairs on the unopened buds of the tea plant?

White tea brews to a pale yellow in spite of its name. The hairs give the plant's youngest buds a whitish look, and the leaves are among the least processed of any tea.

Wadmalaw Island, home to a rare commercial tea plantation once used by Lipton for research, lies in which US state?

South Carolina's Charleston Tea Garden grew out of a research station Lipton set up when it feared unrest abroad would cut off its imports. The company ran the station for about twenty-five years.

In the bush song 'Waltzing Matilda', the swagman brews his campfire tea in a metal can known as what?

Billy is short for billycan, a lightweight metal bucket hung over the fire to boil water. Canadians know the same pot as a billy tin.

Lahpet thoke, a salad made from pickled tea leaves, is a much-loved delicacy of which Southeast Asian country?

Myanmar is one of the few places where tea is eaten as well as drunk. The leaves are fermented first, then tossed into the salad.

The London Fog, an Earl Grey latte sweetened with vanilla syrup, was invented in the 1990s in which Canadian city?

Vancouver café regular Mary Loria came up with the drink while she was pregnant. She has said she does not know who gave it its misleading English name.

The British Standards Institution's method for brewing a cup of tea won which tongue-in-cheek award in 1999?

The Ig Nobel Prize for Literature honoured the standard, which calls for black tea to brew for exactly six minutes. It was written so that tasters could compare teas fairly, not to dictate the perfect cup.

Which philosopher argued about the burden of proof by imagining a teapot in orbit between Earth and Mars?

Bertrand Russell pointed out that nobody could disprove his teapot if he added that it was too small for any telescope to see. That, he argued, gave no one a reason to believe in it.

Celestial Seasonings, the herbal tea company behind the Sleepytime blend, has its home in which Colorado city?

Boulder is where co-founders Mo Siegel and Wyck Hay started out in 1969, gathering wild herbs in the Rocky Mountains to blend into teas. Sleepytime followed three years later.

In the tea trade, the term orange pekoe, often seen on black tea boxes, describes what about the tea?

Its leaf grade is all the label promises: whole leaves of a set size, with no fruit involved. One theory links the 'orange' to the Dutch royal House of Orange-Nassau.

What name do tea growers give each seasonal harvest of new shoots, as in Darjeeling's prized 'first' and 'second'?

Flush harvests differ sharply: the first, picked after winter dormancy, is light and floral, while the second gains a muscatel aroma once leafhoppers have attacked the leaves.

A colleague's claim to taste whether milk went in first inspired a famous tea experiment by which statistician?

Ronald Fisher used the 'lady tasting tea' test in his 1935 book The Design of Experiments to introduce the null hypothesis, an idea every statistics student has met since.

Which Japanese tea master, champion of the wabi-cha tradition, was ordered by Hideyoshi to take his own life?

Sen no Rikyū had been one of the warlord's closest confidants until the two fell out over differences of opinion and his independence. He had earlier served Oda Nobunaga as tea master.

Which British statesman, advised by a Twining, cut the tax on tea from 119 percent to 12.5 percent in 1784?

Pitt the Younger wanted to raise revenue through legitimate sales after a century of punishing duties had fed the smugglers. His Commutation Act effectively ended the illegal trade.

In a Japanese legend, tea bushes sprouted where which monk's severed eyelids fell after he dozed off meditating?

Bodhidharma, the founder of Chan Buddhism, is said to have nodded off after nine years of meditating before a wall and cut the lids away in disgust. Another version gives the tale to the Buddha.

Gorreana, the oldest surviving tea plantation in Europe, lies on São Miguel in which Atlantic island group?

The Azores turned to tea after blight all but destroyed the islands' famous orange groves by 1864. Gorreana is one of only two estates left there.

The much-recorded standard 'Tea for Two' was written for which 1920s stage musical, a Broadway hit in 1925?

No, No, Nanette gave composer Vincent Youmans the biggest success of his career with this duet. Audiences first heard it during the show's Chicago tryout in 1924.

Portuguese says 'chá' rather than a word like 'tea' because its traders picked up the term in which port?

Macau gave Portuguese traders the Cantonese pronunciation, and English borrowed 'cha' from them in the 1590s, decades before the word 'tea' arrived.

Japanese hōjicha stands apart from other green teas because its leaves are treated how, in a pot over charcoal?

Roasted at about 150 °C, the leaves lose their green colour, which sets hōjicha apart at a glance. Most other Japanese teas are steamed instead.