> > Black/Red tea is roughly 100 years old and was a sort of happy
> > accident, it was not invented with anyone in mind. The story of
> > modern day Keemun is that of an accidental change in the processing of
> > green Keemun. Green tea has a much longer history in China than
> > Black/Red and must be more wrapped up in their traditions and culture.
> > The Book of Tea talks about which types of tea are favored in asia
> > and why, it's a very interesting book, highly reccomeded!
> >
> >
> > I think the first tea Europeans drank was green but when given the
> > choice the European culture with it's different taste preferences must
> > have been really taken with Red/Black tea. Then in the ninteenth
> > century when India really took off as a tea growing region the
> > Europeans were able to process tea however they wanted, (the
> > processing of tea had been unknown to the Europeans for a long time)
> > black tea was their main choice.
>
> Thank you for the answer. Now I have checked the matter in John C.
> Evan's excellent book, "Tea in China: The History of China's National
> Drink", and it looks like black/red tea has been around at least in
> the past five hundred years. According this source, black/red tea was
> developed sometime during the Ming Dinasty (1368-1644), explicitly for
> export purposes. It was the same time when the use of tea bricks was
> replaced by loose tea as we know it today. Loose tea compared to brick
> tea traveled badly and was easily spoiled. Ming teamen developed the
> process of fermenting the leaves, thus producing a more robust and
> rot-proof tea that they called red tea. This tea was only ment to be
> exported to the "barbarian lands", like Manchuria, the Chinese
> themself disdained black tea.
>
> In 1644 the Manchus came to power in China. They preferred to drink
> black tea with milk, and this habit spred quickly to Europe, together
> with the first shipments of tea. From the above follows that the
> Europeans most probably received black/red tea from China.
>
> Gyorgy

Wow, great info! Thanks for correcting me. I always thought red tea
was a much more recent invention and I never knew it was only invented
for foriegners. What dates does that book attribute to the other
styles of tea?