The Irish love tea! That is a universal truth but what is the history and timeline behind our passion for a cuppa? We examine the timeline of tea in Ireland. Meet an Irish person on the street or visit an Irish person in his or her home and they will have their tea preference clearly stated, tea needs to be strong, milk and sugar optional. The Irish are snobby about tea .
It’s a tradition, the average person in Ireland drinks four to six cups of tea daily. We have carried this sacred ritual with us wherever we washed up. But where does this affinity come from and how did the Irish become one of the heaviest consumers of tea in the world? Tea has a rich and varied history, having been consumed as far back as 1000 BC.
How tea was first discovered is lost to the mists of time. The origin of tea is somewhere in Southeast Asia. Sign up to IrishCentral's newsletter to stay up-to-date with everything Irish! Here in Ireland, we take our tea very seriously.
In fact, we consume more tea per capita than any other country in the world, apart from Turkey. Tea arrived in Ireland in the early 1800s and was classed as a luxury product - drunk by upper-class wealthy people. Tea was expensive to import, it arrived on Irish shores from far off India , transported by the renowned tea clipper boats.
Tea parties became gatherings of wealthy people. Tea rapidly became more accessible and popular and soon every house in Ireland had a teapot and regular tea parties to go with it. The quality of tea.
