Tea in France

The price was high, however, and tea was reserved for the aristocracy, who were not content just to drink it: it was also used as a smoking plant, salad herb, or ointment ingredient.

In the 19th century, the working classes took up the habit of boiling water to protect themselves against cholera epidemics and became accustomed to tea competing with coffee.

The end of the 19th century was marked by the Japanese movement and the fascination of Parisian cultural elites with the Far East, which gave tea a new lease of life.

An attempt to produce tea on Reunion Island was abandoned in 1972 and not resumed until the beginning of the 21st century, while local experiments were organized in Brittany and Nantes.

Sources differ as to its precise introduction: either via the Dutch, who received their first shipment of tea in Amsterdam in 1610 and then redistributed it in Europe, or directly by the Jesuits, notably Alexandre de Rhodes, a missionary sent to China from 1618 to 1653.

[1] During the Regency and the reign of Louis XV, the consumption of chocolate (claimed to be an aphrodisiac) and coffee (due to the literary cafés) increased in France more than that of tea.

[6] Queen Marie Leszczynska received a Japanese porcelain and French gold set containing tea, chocolate and coffee for the birth of the Dauphin, now kept in the Louvre.

[9][10] Stanislas's confectioner, Joseph Gilliers, recommended choosing leaves that had "a violet taste and smell", boiling them for 15 minutes in water, possibly enriched with two slices of lemon, and drinking the mixture with a sugar loaf.

[11] During the French Revolution, tea, synonymous with luxury and the gulf separating the upper classes from the rest of society, was decried and its consumption discouraged.

[13] The Empress Eugénie de Montijo's private tea room provided an opportunity to bring together the intellectuals of the day (Gustave Flaubert, Alexandre Dumas, Théophile Gautier, Auguste Delacroix, Gustave Doré, Louis Pasteur... ), in the manner of the literary salons of the previous century; it thus served to anchor a filiation between the Second Empire and the French monarchy, this filiation being reaffirmed in the revival of the aesthetic of Marie-Antoinette of Austria and enriched by an assumed celebration of colonial riches.

[16] An attempt to grow tea in French Guiana, an underdeveloped colony where colonists saw their enrichment diminish with the banning of the slave trade in 1815, failed miserably: around 30 Chinese and Malays, drawn from the Manila community, were hired and settled in 1820 in a dwelling on the Kaw marshes.

However, the project had not been properly planned, as the question of whether the site was suitable for growing tea had not been asked, while the workers were installed in poor conditions and subjected to ill treatment.

[18] Attempts were made to produce tea in France during the 19th century, but specimens remained confined to botanical gardens, in part those of the Muséum National d'Histoire Naturelle and the Orangerie du Luxembourg.m 5.

The Vichy regime claimed that these shortages were due to the blockade, but the fact that metropolitan agricultural products, such as pigs, were also in short supply led the French population to believe that it was the German occupiers who were appropriating resources.

[2][27] The market, though highly fragmented, is strongly dominated by brands sold in supermarkets: Lipton accounts for half of sales by volume, followed by Twinings.

[39][40][41] Consumption of iced tea rose sharply in France in the late 2010s, as customers turned away from soft drinks, which were perceived as too sweet.

The importers were founded by foreigners (British with George Cannon, Dutch-British with Betjeman & Barton, Dutch with Dammann Frères, Russian with Kusmi Tea) then set up in France, and dating from the same period.

[52] Several other attempts to produce tea took place on Reunion Island, more precisely at Grand Coude, on a volcanic plateau at an altitude of 1,100 m; production covered almost 350 hectares in the 1960s, only to be abandoned in 1972.

[23][12] The plantation was revived at the beginning of the 21st century: the old tea bushes, now several meters high and therefore unsuitable for picking, were transformed into a tourist attraction.

Other gardens were opened, in a mixed plantation with tobacco to protect the tea bushes from the sun and combat insects, and pumpkins to cover the soil.

[28] Unlike Unilever, Kusmi Tea has chosen to relocate its production (tea and tins) to France, after having previously done so in Morocco: the chairman explains this change of heart by the rising cost of labor worldwide, which is catching up with that of France, the rising cost of oil, greater logistical flexibility induced by the presence of production plants directly in the sales territory, and lastly investments in automation made possible by the CICE.

[3] However, the invention of fine earthenware in England in the mid-seventeenth century and Anglomania meant that the French market was dominated by British imports.

In the 19th century, the continental blockade and technological innovations making it possible to produce rococo-style earthenware from Terre de Lorraine boosted French production, leading to the establishment of new factories in Apt, Bordeaux, Calais, Chantilly, Choisy-le-Roi, Creil, Douai, Forges-les-Eaux, Gien, Le Havre, Longwy, Orléans, Sarreguemines and Val-sous-Meudon.

[62]The twentieth century saw the creation of a style known as "métissage anglais", based on English silver-plated teapots but produced in tinted bisque porcelain.

In Marcel Proust's novel Du côté de chez Swann, the narrator relives his childhood over a madeleine dipped in tea:"...all the flowers in our garden and those in Mr. Swann's park, and the water lilies in the Vivonne, and the good people of the village and their little dwellings and the church and all Combray and its surroundings, all that which takes shape and solidity, has come out, town and gardens, from my cup of tea.

[2] The growing interest in Chinese and Japanese civilizations in France at the turn of the 21st century, which accompanied the increase in tea sales, proved him right.

[6] This interest also stemmed from the falling cost of long-haul flights at the beginning of the 21st century, which enabled more French people to travel and discover cultures where tea is central.

[1] He also likens the French relationship with tea to that of Paris about cuisine: products may not be grown locally, but it is a nerve center to which foodstuffs converge to be magnified and appreciated.

[1] Tastes for aromas evolve: red fruits and vanilla give way to citrus, spices, and turmeric, while rose and jasmine remain classics.

[6] For the British, the French taste for tea is more refined, more delicate than that of the English, and therefore closer to the expectations of Japanese tourists visiting Paris.