Ceremonies, history, and the social life of tea across China, Japan, Britain, Morocco, and the rest of the world.
Tea is rarely just a drink. Almost everywhere it spread, it acquired a ritual: the Japanese ceremony, the British afternoon tea, the Moroccan tea service, the Russian samovar, the Chinese gongfu table.
This section looks at those rituals — what they are, how they developed, and what they say about the cultures that built them.
The most formalized tea tradition in the world — four centuries of refinement, built around one bowl of whisked matcha.
Not a variety but a method — green tea leaves scented with living jasmine blossoms over several nights in midsummer Fuzhou.
Black tea boiled with milk, sugar, and a mixture of spices — the everyday drink of India, sold at every street corner and railway station.