Tea Rituals
Tea rituals are about relationships. The relationship of the tea server with the tea, the environment, the tea ware, the guest (if there is a guest), and to oneself. In Japan the tea ceremony is a ceremony that takes years to perfect and is truly a beautiful experience.
The Japanese tea ceremony dates back hundreds of years and has come to include four principles that are still at the heart of the ceremony today. Respect, harmony, purity and tranquility. The location of a tea ceremony varies. In a ceremony held in a tea house, the guests wait in the garden until called into the house by the host.
A full ceremony complete with a meal and many guests may take a couple hours and is a ritual that varies all over the world in different cultures. In 1904 on a hot summer's day at the World’s Fair in Saint Louis a new type of tea was invented, iced tea! Richard Blechynden, a tea merchant from Britain, in a desperate attempt to sell hot black tea, poured the steaming beverage over ice and re introduced iced tea to the world.
Today, both hot and iced teas are more popular than ever, the second most consumed beverage in the world only to water. Last year Americans alone consumed more than 2.5 billion gallons of tea. Create your own tea ritual and enjoy a cup of Gorreana's single estate teas for Europe's historic tea estate and gardens located in the mid-Atlantic European Islands of the Azores Since 1800's.
