70 free Tea trivia questions with answers — food & drink quiz, new questions added Aug 2026.
65 free Tea trivia questions with answers. Tea trivia for anyone who has ever argued about milk first or last. This quiz covers the whole story of the leaf: the legend of Emperor Shennong, the eighth-century Classic of Tea, the Portuguese princess who made it fashionable in England, the Scottish botanist who smuggled plants out of China, and the tax protest that dumped 340-odd chests into Boston Harbor. It also digs into what is actually in the cup: what separates green, oolong and black tea, why matcha is grown in the shade, where bubble tea and masala chai come from, which country drinks the most per person, and why Tibetans get through dozens of small cups a day. Expect easy warm-ups, brand history from Twinings to Lipton, and a few genuinely hard ones about Da Hong Pao and tea-garden time. Every answer has been checked against Wikipedia and the primary sources it cites, and each explanation adds one more thing worth knowing.
30 of 70 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Tea is brewed from the leaves of which plant species?
Camellia sinensis
The others are yerba mate, coffee and rooibos, none of which is technically tea.
Q 02After plain drinking water, which is the most widely consumed beverage in the world?
Tea
Global production reached 29.8 million tonnes in 2022, nearly half of it from China.
Q 03Chinese legend credits the discovery of tea in 2737 BC to which mythical emperor?
Shennong
In the story a few leaves blew from a nearby tree into his pot of boiling water and changed its colour and taste.
Q 04Tea drinking may have begun for medicinal purposes in which Chinese province?
Yunnan
The probable centre of origin of the plant is near the source of the Irrawaddy River.
Q 05The Classic of Tea, an eighth-century treatise on tea and its preparation, was written by whom?
Lu Yu
The book describes how the plants were grown, the leaves processed and the drink prepared.
Q 06Which Europeans first introduced tea drinking to Europe during the 16th century?
The Portuguese
Priests and merchants made first contact with tea in China; the Dutch brought the 'te' pronunciation a century later.
Q 07Which princess brought the tea-drinking habit to the English court when she married Charles II in 1662?
Catherine of Braganza
She was Portuguese, from the country that had first carried tea to Europe.
Q 08'Tea' reached English in the 17th century via the Dutch from which variety of Chinese?
Min
The 'cha' form had already reached English in the 1590s through the Portuguese.
Q 09Which type of tea is wilted, bruised and only partially oxidized?
Oolong
Its oxidation can run anywhere from about 8 to 85 percent, and the name means 'dark dragon'.
Q 10Which country led global tea production in 2022 with roughly 49 percent of the total?
China
China, India and Sri Lanka are among the handful of countries that account for about 81 percent of world production.
Q 11Turkish tea is traditionally served in small glasses of what shape, called ince belli or 'slim-waisted'?
Tulip
Most of it is Rize tea from the Black Sea coast, brewed in a stacked two-pot caydanlik.
Q 12As of 2016, which country was the world's second-biggest per-capita consumer of tea?
Ireland
The Irish average works out to between 2.7 and 4 kilograms per person a year.
Q 13Roughly what share of tea's dry weight is caffeine?
About 3%
That works out to between 30 and 90 milligrams in a 250-millilitre cup.
Q 14Which New York tea importer popularized tea bags around 1908 by shipping samples in small silk pouches?
Q 21On December 16, 1773, colonists disguised as Mohawks dumped East India Company tea into which harbor?
Boston
The ships were the Dartmouth, Eleanor and Beaver, and the cargo was worth about 9,659 pounds sterling.
Q 22Which May 1773 act gave the East India Company a monopoly and set off the Massachusetts protest?
The Tea Act
Britain answered the protest with the Intolerable Acts, closing Boston's port.
Q 23Britain countered its trade deficit with China using which narcotic, sparking an 1839 war?
Opium
The resulting Treaty of Nanking ceded Hong Kong Island to Britain in perpetuity.
Thomas Sullivan
Two Milwaukee women, Roberta Lawson and Mary McLaren, had already patented a 'Tea Leaf Holder' in 1903.
Q 15Which brand introduced tea bags to the United Kingdom in 1953?
Tetley
PG Tips answered decades later with the pyramid bag in 1997.
Q 16In 1848 the East India Company sent which Scottish botanist to China to bring tea plants back to India?
Robert Fortune
He travelled disguised as a Chinese merchant and shipped the plants in Wardian cases.
Q 17Darjeeling tea, marketed as the 'Champagne of teas', is grown in which Indian state?
West Bengal
In 2004 it became India's first product to receive geographical indication protection under the WTO's TRIPS agreement.
Q 18The Tea Board of India recognizes how many estates as producers of authentic Darjeeling tea?
87
Between them they cover about 17,500 hectares at 600 to 2,000 metres above sea level.
Q 19Which is the world's largest tea-growing region by production, sitting in the Brahmaputra valley?
Assam
Its gardens run on 'Tea Garden Time', an hour ahead of Indian Standard Time, a leftover from British rule.
Q 20Which country was the world's largest exporter of black tea in 2018?
Kenya
Tea was first planted there in 1903 at Limuru, and most of it is sold through a public auction in Mombasa.
Q 24The tea clipper Cutty Sark, built in 1869, takes its name from a character in a poem by whom?
Robert Burns
She was launched the same year the Suez Canal opened, which handed the China route to steamships, so she later hauled Australian wool instead.
Q 25Afternoon tea is usually credited to Anna, the seventh Duchess of which title, in the 1840s?
Bedford
She wanted something to bridge the gap between midday dinner and an evening meal that could come as late as eight o'clock.
Q 26The hearty working-class evening meal called 'high tea' got its name from what?
The tall table it was eaten at
It was the hearty working-class evening meal; the dainty afternoon version was 'low tea'.
Q 27A traditional West Country tea centres on scones served with jam and what?
Clotted cream
Devon puts the cream on first and Cornwall the jam, and neither county will let it go.
Q 28Earl Grey tea is a black tea flavoured with the oil of which citrus fruit?
Bergamot
Twinings' Lady Grey adds cornflower and Seville orange to the blend.
Q 29Thomas Twining opened Britain's first known tea room in 1706 at No. 216 on which London street?
The Strand
The firm still trades there, and its 1787 logo is the world's oldest in continuous use.
Q 30In which country did Glasgow grocer Thomas Lipton buy tea gardens in 1890?
Ceylon
The yellow pack with the red shield dates from the same year and is still in use.