This book helps to experience the world's finest tea. The Tea Book guides you through the best ways to choose, prepare and taste the many different varieties of tea available around the world, with everything you need to know to bring the fragrance and allure of the tea shop into your home. The essential companion for all tea aficionados, this detailed tea book features over one hundred international tea recipes, including chai tea, matcha, the increasingly popular bubble tea, and herbal tisanes such as Yerba Mate. Tasting notes help you to identify key characteristics, so that you can tell your green tea from your pu'er. With information on growing and harvest seasons, and maps of the most important tea-producing regions. This practical, fully illustrated guide is perfect for tea lovers.

From chai to oolong to sencha, tea is one of the world's most popular beverages. Perhaps that is because it is a unique and adaptable drink, consumed in many different varieties by cultures across the globe and in many different settings, from the intricate traditions of Japanese teahouses to the elegant tearooms of Britain to the verandas of the deep South. In Tea food historian Helen Saberi explores this rich and fascinating history. Saberi looks at the economic and social uses of tea, such as its use as a currency during the Tang Dynasty and 1913 creat

A Dark History of Tea' looks at our long relationship with this most revered of hot beverages. Renowned food historian Seren Charrington-Hollins digs into the history of one of the world's oldest beverages, tracing tea's significance on the tables of the high and mighty as well as providing relief for workers who had to contend with the ardours of manual labour. This humble herbal infusion has been used in burial rituals, as a dowry payment for aristocrats; it has fuelled wars and spelled fortunes as it built empires and sipped itself into being an integral part of the cultural fabric of British life. This book delves into the less tasteful history of a drink now considered quintessentially British. It tells the story of how, carried on the backs of the cruelty of slavery and illicit opium smuggling, it flowed into the cups of British society as an enchanting beverage. Chart the exportation of spices, silks and other goods like opium in exchange for tea, and explain how the array of good fortunes - a huge demand in Britain, a marriage with sugar, naval trade and the existence of the huge trading firms - all spurred the first impulses of modern capitalism and floated countries. The story of tea takes the reader on a fascinating journey from myth, fable and folklore to murky stories of swindling, adulteration, greed, waging of wars, boosting of trade in hard drugs and slavery and the great, albeit dark engines that drove the globalisation of the world economy. All of this is spattered with interesting facts about tea etiquette, tradition and illicit liaisons making it an enjoyable rollercoaster of dark discoveries that will cast away any thoughts of tea as something that merely accompanies breaks, sit downs and biscuits.

"After water, tea is the second-most consumed drink in the world, and the most popular drink in the UK: the British currently each get through an average of three and a half cups a day. But tea is not just another commodity; it is a phenomenon. It has changed the attitudes of one nation to another, exposed dividions of class and race, ossified social behaviour, shaped the ethics of business, influenced relations between management and labour and led to significant advances in medicine. Never before has there been so comprehensive a history of tea in all its aspects"--Front flap.

"There is no more refined ritual than that of tea drinking in Asia. In Tea in the East, Carole Manchester, author of French Tea, invites you on a journey to the earliest tea-producing countries - China, Japan, India, Sri Lanka - to savor the pleasures of the ancient brew. Lavishly illustrated with beautiful full-color photographs of tea ceremonies and their exotic settings, Tea in the East evokes the tranquillity [sic] and unique pleasures of the Eastern tea. In China, aged tea leaves are steeped for seconds in a tiny clay pot and poured into doll-sized handleless [sic] cups, the earthy taste savored as if it were a rare wine. In a still, silent room in Kyoto, powdered green tea is reverently whisked in a ceramic bowl in preparation for the tea ceremony. On the lawn of a planters' club in India, tea is served in cups covered with tiny beaded doilies to keep the tea free from dust."--Inside flap. "As delicate and elegant as the utensils of the eastern tea ceremony itself [sic] are their sweet and savory accompaniments. Dim sum, tiny stuffed delicacies, are served with a Cantonese tea; a bitter Japanese tea is balanced by seasonal bean curd sweets; Indians serve hot and spicy pastries with milky, sugary tea; and Sri Lankans drink their tea with crepe-like pastries called hoppers. Together with the story of tea in the East, you'll find recipes for tempting and unusual tea accompaniments, including a savory Green Tea-Marinated Chicken Sandwich, Marbled Tea Eggs, and the Russian Tea Room Spice Cake."--Inside flap.