By Eric Brand

China is the original homeland of tea, and to this day China produces over 90% of the world’s green tea.  Tea was a focal point of trade for centuries, and has long been one of China’s most important exports.  In fact, until recently the Chinese government classified tea as an industry related to national security, and in past centuries the British demand for tea was a major contributor to one of the world’s first major trade deficits (and a key factor in the start of the Opium Wars).  In addition to selling opium and starting a war to reduce their trade deficit, the British sent a small team into China to collect tea plants and they brought a few Chinese tea growers over to India so that they could learn to cultivate tea themselves to reduce their dependence on Chinese exports.  Over time, India and Sri Lanka became major centers of tea cultivation for black tea, but China has always been the main center of the green tea world.  (Interestingly enough, Africa is now the largest tea market in the world in terms of volume, and they source most of their green tea from China.)

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Tea is quite popular in the TCM community, and the rising awareness of the health benefits of tea has brought increased popularity in the West as a whole.  At present, Chinese exporters still view the U.S. market as small and characterized by demand for low-quality and low-prices, often without any differentiation of varieties.  Indeed, many Americans think of tea as simply being either black or green, and they don’t realize that there are literally hundreds of varieties of green tea, each with its own special character, growing region, and processing method.  In fact, the exact same is true for coffee in China: China goes through something like 40 million tons of coffee per year and nearly all of it is terrible and not differentiated by variety or growing region.  Yet each country has a small share of connoisseurs and enthusiasts that seek out great quality and this group will continue to grow as awareness of tea develops.  To bridge the remaining cultural gap and cater to the discerning tea drinker, Blue Poppy has recently decided to start providing a small range of high-quality tea, so we’ve been scouting out the scene in China.



After visiting many tea markets and trying hundreds of teas, we decided to focus on organically-grown tea, with one major representative of several broad categories of tea.  We will have a Qimen black tea, oolong tea, white tea, and several varieties of green tea.  Within the green tea, we’ll have Longjing (dragon well), Jasmine, Hou Kui, and a few others.  We will be sourcing the tea directly from a consortium of organic growers, so the quality and price should be great.  We may even add a few products such as tea extracts and lozenges, so watch for some exciting new tea products coming from Blue Poppy this autumn!