Hey everyone, Lauslle Montgomery here.

Thanks for joining me in this first episode of the T-history podcast.

In looking back on the last six years since I presented that T-history series

and thinking about all the places T has taken me, the people I've

met along the way and who have taught me so much.

I can really understand why tea is called, among other things, a social beverage.

Human kind was gifted with three great natural beverages,

cocoa, coffee, and tea.

If you don't include the air we breathe and the water we drink, nothing on earth is consumed in greater quantities than tea.

Tea wasn't the first of these so-called three great temperance beverages to arrive in Europe.

Cocoa came in 1528, brought there by the great world superpower of the day,

España.

Spanish brought it from the new world after the Aztec conquest in 1521.

Next up was T in 1610, thanks to all Naderlanders for that.

Then five years later in 1615, Venetian traders were credited with bringing coffee to Europe from Constantinople.

Tea became the first global commodity shipped to markets on six continents.

Its history, undeniably, began in Asia.

The Golden Triangle region, associated in the 20th century with narcotic drugs was also where the original tea garden was.

Tea trees have been around for more than 50 million years.

One of the early experts, very much admired in his day and revered by many, on all things tea that is,

was William Euchers, whose Magnum Opus All About Tea, published in 1935, said, quote,

The original jungles where tea trees grew wild

...