The Story of Tea

by Mary Lou Heiss

  An ideal tea kaiseki takes place in a small teahouse with four guests, plus the tea master. The meal can have up to nine or more courses, depending upon the nature of the guests attending. For example, if a famous potter is coming to the tea, the kaiseki meal might include an extra course to show off the potter’s wares. The format is somewhat flexible to accommodate these gestures. Unlike restaurant kaiseki, tea kaiseki dishes arrive in a set order. Also, there are certain restrictions with the foods. For example, at a restaurant kaiseki you will encounter fried foods, which you would never encounter at a tea kaiseki because the oils would coat the tongue and ruin the taste of the tea to come.

  Here is the standard format for a tea kaiseki:

  First Tray. Every guest receives a square black lacquer tray containing what is considered the first “course,” which consists of the following three dishes: Rice (a bowl holding a small amount of steamed white rice), Miso soup (a bowl of miso soup), and Mukozuke (a small dish of marinated fish or vegetables). Some sake is served at this point.

  Wanmori. This is the climax of the kaiseki because it is considered the chef’s greatest effort. It is a soup-like dish consisting of a beautiful clear broth filled with seasonal ingredients and garnishes.

  Yakimono. This is a grilled dish and could feature a few bites of grilled fish or several grilled mushroom caps, depending upon the tea master’s whim and the season.

  Shiizakana. This is an optional dish composed of fish that is served at this point in the kaiseki if the guests want more sake.

  Azukebachi. This is another optional dish made from any leftover ingredients used to prepare the other dishes in the kaiseki. It would be served, for example, as a way to showcase a famous potter’s bowl.

  Hashiarai. This dish is called a “chopstick wash” and is usually some hot water flavored with something in season, such as a spring cherry blossom. This course enables diners to rinse the smoky grilled flavors from the grilled dish off their chopsticks, particularly if no optional dishes are served.

  Hassun. This course consists of a beautiful pink cedar tray holding a seasonal item from the mountains (maybe a wild green) and something from the ocean (perhaps a few shrimp).

  Konomono. This is the pickle course consisting of a few pickled vegetables, such as turnip.

  Yuto. This dish is made from the crispy bits of rice that have stuck to the bottom of the cooking pot mixed with warm salted water. The monks used to make this in the temples.

  This ends the tea kaiseki, although the tea master/chef can offer an extra course anywhere along the way. Guests then leave the teahouse, return and enjoy a sweet before the ceremonial whipped green tea.

  For restaurant kaiseki and tea kaiseki, cooks aim to offer diners different textures, colors, and flavors throughout the meal for variety and pleasure. Grilling, steaming, and simmering, for example, are used to prepare various courses and ingredients are chosen to offer a variety of colors (white, red, yellow, purple-black, and blue-green) and flavors (salty, sweet, sour, spicy, and bitter) to each dish.

  The goal of a tea kaiseki is to transport the diner to another world—away from the cares of everyday life—so that he/she might reach enlightenment. The diner enters the tearoom and focuses on nothing more than the sensual pleasures of all that exists: the poetic nature of the flowers and scroll in the alcove, the beauty of the serving pieces, the seasonal symbolism of the ingredients, the artful presentation of the courses, and the chef’s heartfelt desire to please his guests.

  When a tea master holds a tea ceremony, the event is considered incredibly precious because he and the guests know that they will never gather together again at that moment, on that day, in that year, in their lifetime. There is a famous saying in tea: “ichi go ichi e,” meaning, “one chance in one’s lifetime.” Like the eagerly anticipated cherry blossoms, which burst into bloom in the spring and then quickly die, so is the kaiseki meal—an ephemeral experience that, for a brief moment in time, offers guests a rare taste of the divine.

  JAPANESE TETSUBIN

  Exemplary craftsmanship is the hallmark of every Japanese iron teakettle and teapot. Supported by a tradition that goes back more than four hundred years, tetsubin have been faithful servants to emperors, scholars, artists, and tea connoisseurs. Tetsubin originated as Japanese household pot-bellied cast-iron teakettles and were a class apart from chagama, the handle-less and spoutless iron water kettles used in Chanoyu. Because these kettles were given both handles and spouts, tetsubin were expressly meant for heating water for brewing everyday tea.

  A large Japanese cast-iron water kettle (tetsubin) is a household item used to heat water for filling sencha teapots, such as the brown-and-white Tokonoma teapot and a green Oribe teapot shown here.

  Although class and status were displayed by the intricacy of the tetsubin’s design and surface embellishment, these teakettles were not meant to be status objects but rather something functional to place over the hearth and provide hot water. The classic tetsubin has a dark brown or black pebbled surface that is embossed with simple designs that underscore the simple yet austere nature of these kettles. During the mid-nineteenth century tetsubins were taken out of the kitchen and elevated to the position of status symbol among the elites using them to serve tea. Consequently, the size of tetsubins became sleeker and smaller, and the designs more pleasing and artistic.

  Today beautiful tetsubin are made by companies such as Kunsan, Nambu, and Iwachu in Iwate prefecture or by artisan ironworkers in Yamagata prefecture, and the direction is toward teapots rather than teakettles. Interior enamel coating and stainless-steel tea infusers have been added to today’s vessels, creating the perfect combination of form and function in a teapot. This new direction is bringing contemporary colors to traditional tetsubin shapes, as well as heat-proof trivets and iron teacups, which complete the tea presentation.

  Tea Culture in Europe

  In seventeenth-century Europe there was a lust for all things Chinese. Chinese tea traders fanned the flames of the Western tea craze by including first porcelain teacups, then porcelain teapots, with each shipment of tea to Europe. In fact, the Chinese were savvy businessmen who satisfied many different markets with their porcelain goods. In addition to their trade with the Near East and India, the Chinese eventually shipped great quantities of export porcelains to America, Europe, Japan, and Southeast Asia.

  While Portuguese traders first brought tea to Portugal in the late 1500s, it was Dutch traders who created a frenzy for drinking tea in Amsterdam in 1610. By the time that the first public tea auction was held in London in 1669, a strong secondary market for ceramic paraphernalia from which to serve and drink this new hot beverage had developed. Up to the mid-1600s, Europeans reveled in a few luxury Chinese export items—silks, spices, and lacquer wares. With the arrival of tea and its dissemination among the social classes throughout the seventeenth century, it became necessary to acquire the appropriate drink wares and tablewares for the proper enjoyment of these beverages.

  Although it is hard to imagine today, prior to the mid-seventeenth century, most citizens of Europe did not have a history of consuming hot beverages other than medicated potions for the sick or ailing or herbal brews known as possets. Alcohol was the drink of the day, but as world trade commenced and Europe was introduced to the three stimulating social beverages—coffee, tea, and chocolate—that literally changed their world, beverage consumption changed.

  Cottage rose patterns and chintz-inspired designs are perennial favorites with contemporary English teaware manufacturers.

  CHINESE PORCELAIN FINDS A RIVAL

  In the beginning of the tea-drinking boom, Europeans embraced the handle-less porcelain teacups that Dutch traders purchased from China. While the Chinese could brew tea and sip it all from the same cup, these cups presented a problem for the Europeans, who puzzled over how to prepare and drink this wondrous and strange costly hot beverage. From 1669 to 1690 Dutch and English East India trading ships heading back home from China bega
n to bring in their cargo small Yixing teapots, and later, small blanc-de-chine white porcelain pots decorated in green, red, and orange colors. At the end of the seventeenth century, blue and white overglazed porcelain pots were exported. Except for the Yixing teapots, these teapots were made expressly for export and varied in the placement of spouts and handles, in the overall shape of the teapot, and in how the lids fit. They were also small in size. The influence of these early Chinese export porcelains was absorbed, then later reinvented by European ceramics factories eager to supply their own market with these desirable objects and to keep the profits that were now going to China. For some time the Europeans were successful at producing “soft-paste” porcelain, but the secrets of Chinese “hard-paste” porcelain eluded them. And it was necessary for them to be able to produce a hard-paste porcelain as it was this material that was able to absorb the shock of the hot water used in tea brewing.

  A Chinese polychrome China Trade teapot.

  It was not until 1707 that a German alchemist named Johann Friedrich Böttger added some kaolin clay to his porcelain recipe and discovered that this ingredient added the missing hardness to the pottery. This unlocked the secret that the Europeans had been searching for. In 1710 a porcelain factory was established in Meissen, Germany, which began producing hard-paste porcelains. This opened the door for eventual porcelain production in Sèvres and Limoges in France beginning in 1767 and shortly after in several English factories, such as Coalport, Spode, and Worcester.

  TEA EQUIPAGE IS GIVEN A WESTERN FLAVOR

  Across Europe in the early part of the eighteenth century tea drinking was a socially prominent activity reserved for the upper class, and it required teawares that reflected this fashion and the position one held in society. Once the Europeans could manufacture their own porcelain teawares, there was no stopping the highly elaborate nature of the teawares produced, nor the volume of helpful accoutrements deemed necessary to decorate and augment service at the tea table. The need for paraphernalia such as tea caddies for keeping tea fresh and to protect it from contamination were ideas borrowed from the pottery and metal jars in which the Chinese stored tea. Sterling silver scoops to measure the dry leaf were fashioned by silversmiths and made to replicate the real seashell scoops that Chinese tea men would enclose with containers of tea heading to England. Inevitably, other accessory objects were required to support European tea service, such as tea tables, elaborate silver tea caddies, ornate silver vessels for heating water, and serving trays. The Europeans began to produce teacups that were larger than those the Chinese used and handles were added, which made the cups easier to hold when filled with hot liquid. Generously sized saucers served to catch overflows and spills and larger capacity teapots allowed for tea to be made for the entire family at once. For the wealthy, porcelain teawares were fashioned into grandly shaped elaborations and decorated with real and imagined scenes that appealed to worldly and adventurous Western tastes. Traveling tea sets were custom fit into protective leather carrying cases for outfitting day trips and journeys near or far.

  Even before the successful discovery of porcelain in Europe, potters tried to copy the style and design of Chinese teapots. From 1670 to 1708 a Dutch potter named Ary de Milde fashioned teapots that imitated Yixing ware in smoothness of finish, shape, and fineness of detail. With the advent of European-produced porcelain wares, it became fashionable for designers to painstakingly hand-paint Western-style, idealized versions of Chinese-inspired designs and motifs. This style of decorating was called chinoiserie but was later abandoned in favor of elaborate and realistic paintings of fruits and flowers or pastoral scenes of ladies and gentlemen at leisure.

  The addition of milk and sugar to tea is a Western convention credited to the Dutch, who were the first Europeans to bring Chinese tea back home to the Continent on a steady basis. Although the Han Chinese have no history of diluting their tea with anything other than with the juice extracts of fresh fruits or delicately scented flower petals or savory spices such as ginger, the Dutch most likely observed or learned of this milk tea custom from the Manchu emperors of the Qing dynasty (1644–1911).

  THE ADVENT OF THE TEACUP HANDLE

  With a tea-drinking population desirous of adding milk and sugar to their tea, it was necessary for European porcelain producers to accommodate these whims with the appropriate teawares. As there were no Chinese prototypes to copy, European manufacturers had to devise such accessories that English tea service required, such as creamers and sugar bowls, fanciful silver sugar tongs, and dainty spoons to stir in cream and sugar, along with locked boxes, sugar caddies, and grand water dispensers for hot water.

  Let’s have a nice cup of tea and a sit down.

  —ENGLISH SAYING

  At first, Europeans copied the Chinese style of handle-less teacups, but handles and saucers were soon deemed necessary to a citizenry not used to drinking hot beverages and thus they became standard additions. Teapots grew in size as the middle class joined the ranks of tea drinkers, and social opportunities for taking tea increased as the cost of purchasing tea declined. As tea drinking reached all of the classes of society, and tea drinking became a social habit conducted in public as well as in private, teapots and teacups and saucers began to appear in more affordable stoneware and earthenware materials. Tea began to come in packages that sufficed for storage; the average family no longer needed to pay for an expensive tea caddy.

  Tea Culture in the United States

  By the late 1700s China’s porcelain trade with Europe was on the decline, but by 1784, shortly after independence from Britain, America began to purchase both tea and porcelain directly and, most importantly, tax-free from China. The young nation’s exuberance over its newly found freedom created a market within America for tea sets festooned with patriotic symbols, freedom motifs, family crests, and fraternal insignias. Before tea became the symbol of and the catalyst behind the American Revolution, expanding world trade and the strengthening of industry in America allowed every tea-drinking citizen to put an English teapot on his or her table. New England silversmiths such as Paul Revere brought a new clean line and a fresh design sense to English-inspired silver teapots and tea sets.

  In New England, Ohio, and Virginia early American potters initially created utilitarian kitchenwares from heavy clays, and painted dark brown or red-brown glazed backgrounds with simply drawn mustard yellow designs. Yellow pottery and blue-gray pottery followed, as did soft-paste white creamware, but it was not until the mid to late nineteenth century that the influence of European porcelain factories began to affect the style of American wares. Immigrant pottery workers from England and Germany came to America and established new pottery firms or put their experienced skills to use in fledgling American pottery factories.

  These workers introduced changes in the raw materials used, which were followed by changes in the look and style of American ceramic and porcelain wares. Wares became less dark and heavy, and soft-paste china began to sport floral designs and pleasing modern lines and shapes. Pottery factories were located throughout New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, and West Virginia, but the largest concentration settled in East Liverpool, Ohio. By the late nineteenth century porcelain factories, such as Lenox, began production, but formal, highly decorated porcelain tea sets never reached the zenith of production in America that they did in Europe. Companies such as Knowles, Taylor & Knowles; Harker Pottery Company; Metlox; Homer Laughlin; Steubenville Pottery Company; Taylor, Smith & Taylor Co.; and countless hundreds of others all produced casual, everyday teapots and tea sets. Although most of these early factories have closed or gone out of business, charming examples of these teapots and oftentimes complete tea sets can still be found in antique shops and at antique shows across the country for reasonable prices.

  Tea Culture in the Russian Federation

  Before the introduction of tea into Russia in the mid-1600s, Russians drank a mixture of hot water, honey, and herbs known as sbiten. The water for this brew was
heated in an open, hot-pot type, broad-based vessel known as a sbitennik, a devise introduced to them by the Tartars in the fourteenth century. Eventually samovars replaced the sbitennek, but the origin of the samovar is a discussion about which no conclusive agreement has yet been reached. One possibility is that samovars were influenced by the sbitennik or other similar open, spigot-less cooking vessels used in China and Central Asia at that time.

  Other possibilities exist. In the late 1600s and early 1700s tall, vase-style, charcoal-burning urns that stood on a base were in use in England and Holland for heating water. Like the later samovars, these urns had a central heating tube, but unlike the sbitennik they had a lid and a spigot from which to dispense the hot water. From the early 1770s, when samovars were first made in Russia, until they became somewhat commonplace in the 1890s, outside cultural ideas from the Middle East and Europe as well as from China and Central Asia influenced Russian culture. But luckily for tea fanciers, the samovar did become the four-legged, fanciful, ornate urn that will forever be the icon of Russian tea culture. Samovars are closely associated with all social levels of Russian life and are in the palace of the tsars as well as in modest homes, teahouses, and train stations. Samovars are mentioned in the works of such Russian literary giants as Chekov, Gogol, and Pushkin.