tea trivia

Bet you never knew this about tea…

Tea was ‘invented’ in  2737 when a leaf fell into a cup of hot water prepared for Chinese Emperor Shen Nun.

After water, tea is the world’s most popular drink, with more than 3 billion cups drunk daily.

Australians drink approximately 22 million cups every day – that’s nearly one per person!

Ireland is one of the biggest per capita consumers of tea in the world, averaging four cups per day per person!

Loose leaf tea contains more health benefits than tea bags which generally contain ‘dust’ or broken leaf pieces left-over after processing.

Rare tea is a good investment in China – in October 2010 The Sydney Morning Herald reported a rare Dahongpao tea selling for $1,624 per kilo.

As recently as World War II, tea bricks were traded as currency in Siberia.

According to an article in the Calcutta, India Telegraph published in 2007, an 80 year old man from Burdwan district was living on nothing but 18-20 cups of tea per day. He took up the unusual diet in protest to his wife serving him lunch 30 minutes late one day.

There are reportedly more than 20,000 different distinctions of tea in the world and yet they are all made from the same type of leaf from  the Camellia Sinesis bush.