History of Tea in RussiaTea and vodka are the national drinks of Russia. Cossack chieftains Yalyshev and Petrov were the first Russians to drink tea when they visited China in 1567, but Russian interest in tea didn’t actually begin until after 1618 when Imperial Russia was attempting to engage China in trade. It was then that the Chinese embassy in Moscow presented Czar Alexis with the gift of several chests of tea.
With the resulting treaty, trade caravans crossed back and forth between the common border of Russia and China. This difficult 11,000-mile journey sometimes took sixteen months to complete with a costly caravan of a few hundred camels, rendering tea to be cost prohibitive. As a result, it was available only to the wealthy.
By 1877, the price of tea had dropped somewhat and it became more available to the general population. This hearty, warm beverage was well-suited to Russian life. It was introduced into the ration of the Russian Army, replacing the wine ration. The popularity of tea grew rapidly.
Tea plantations were first introduced in Georgia in 1833, but it never produced much interest other than individual enthusiasts. The production of tea in Russia never obtained the support of the government.
The opening of the Suez Canal provided a faster and more profitable means of shipping and the area of Odessa in the Ukraine became known as the “tea gate”. However, it was also the center of tea forgery. To increase the weight of tea, metal shavings and other weight enhancing fillers were added. This falsification ultimately decreased the trade from this area. Because it was quite probably that good pure tea could not be found in this area, it may be the reason why tea drinking never took root in the Ukraine region as it did in other parts of Russia.
|