The ancient Chinese discoveries of the medicinal and pleasurable benefits deriving from the tea leaf have carried with it throughout the centuries an ever-evolving, individualistic defining and redefining of this olden beverage. For many Japanese, such events as the Green Tea Ceremony, are considered as highly respected occasions for carrying on an important cultural etiquette. In British and European cultures, tea had eventually become poured down the spout of the aristocracy and into the common cups of the working class, when during the mid 1800’s, increased tensions in the tea-trading market with China opened new venues for tea plantations in other regions of the world. Soon the art of tea began permeating societies and nations all over the world. Not only as an intimate business of partaking in ritualistic afternoon ceremonies, but also as an entrepreneurial enterprise of production, manufacture, and trade.

Oh, yes! Tea is at the root of building the national institution we today call America. A brief abridgment into America-Past will enlighten the reader as to how the interweaving of tea in our history became the watershed for America’s desire for national and capitalistic freedom.