Black Tea

The Portuguese sailors were the first Europeans to trade tea in China in the 1500’s AD. The first shipment of tea to Western Europe was made by the Dutch East India Company in 1606. They were all green teas when the merchandise was loaded on board in Amoy, a major seaport in Southern China. The term “Orange Pekoe” referred to a first-grade green tea imported to Europe by a company bearing the royal family name of the Dutch monarch- “Oranje”. The word “Pekoe” which now means black tea in the English dictionaries is the phonetic spelling of the Amoy dialect word “white fine hair” or “down”, still used in China among the tea traders to describe the appearance of the dry green tea leaves composed of the buds and the first two young leaves. However, after a long sea journey with constant agitation over the choppy warm ocean water in humid hot weather, the high quality “Pekoe” green tea were largely molded and had turned “black” with its characteristic bitter taste as a result of oxidation and degradation when the ship arrived in Holland. The Europeans would put sugar and milk into the bitter tea from China, which had turned black. This is the origin of black tea, a European invention.