Russian Ceremonies. #4. Russian Tchai vs English Tea.
Tea leaves from Asia used all possible ways to conquer Europe. While endless caravans of camels, boats and trains of horses penetrated the steppes, taiga, mountains and rivers of Russia to reach the biggest markets in Moscow, Nizhniy Novgorod or Torzhok and to finish their trip at a Samovar in a deep-deep corner of the country, a fleet of clippers of His Majesty George IV furrowed the waters of three oceans to bring to the ports of England thousands of tones of fine Chinese tea. Both ways took about 4 months, but the capacity of a sea ship was much bigger than the one of an "oboz", so the quantity of the expensive goods imported by the UK was much bigger than by the Russians. So tea found a new way to Russia - from the West. By the way, the difference of the name of the drink in English and Russian is the result of geographical position of the points of dispatch of tea in China: at the North of the country they say Tcha, at the Southern seashore - Te.
The consumption of tea grew, but the economists of the countries-importers were not so happy as it meant a lot of money frozen due to the transportation time. The solution was evident, but the efforts of British were more successful and in 1824 the first tea plants came to Ceylon. After 40 years the export of tea from Ceylon, India and Kenia overcame the one from China, the money involved into the business stayed in the British economy. Very soon British tea companies became leaders of the market.
Russian tea-merchants choose another way of development and started to buy plantations of tea in China, so by the end of the XIX century at the very centre of Hubei province there was a large Russian colony around a tea factory of the merchant Litvinov.
The product coming from the Russian plantations was very special. They called it "bricks" of tea because of its form. Actually that was a pressed mix of dried fermented leaves and branches. Bricks were cheap, had a low quality but contented much more caffeine than expensive high-quality fine tea leaves produced by British. That is why "tea bricks"became so popular among the majority of the population of Russia and Asia.
The transportation ways developed, since 1869 through the Canal of Suez ships came to Odessa, opened in 1903 the Trans-Siberian Railway replaced the caravans and obozes. It meant the beginning of the era of Tea Trading Companies, among them "V. Visotskiy and Co."was the biggest. By 1917 the turnover of the firm was over 70 mln rubles. The Visotskie owned tea-packing companies in Moscow, Petersburg, Ekaterinburg and other cities. The company became an official Supplier of the Russian Emperor House as well as the Persian Shah.
