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Scotland’s relationship with tea started in the early 1600s, when it was formally introduced to the country by the Duchess of York, Mary of Modena. Later, many Scots went to India and Ceylon (now Sri Lanka) to start and run tea estates. Scotsman James Taylor is known as the father of Ceylon tea.

Scots helped make tea a global drink. Lipton, one of the most recognizable brands, was started by a Scottish citizen. Thomas Lipton opened his first grocery shop in Glasgow, Scotland in 1871. 

After growing his grocery business to over 300 stores, he entered the tea business. Buying directly from growers and even starting an estate himself, Lipton became the first to sell tea to the public at low prices. He was one of the first to create a specific brand of tea that would be the same everywhere it was sold. In the 1890s, Lipton expanded his brand to America.

Although the most popular type of tea is English Breakfast, it was created in Scotland. According to legend, it was invented in Edinburgh, Scotland by a Scottish Tea master. Queen Victoria, fond of all things Scottish, popularized the blend in England. It eventually became known as breakfast tea. Over the years, companies across the world have copied this blend. where they are.

In the early days of tea consumption, the leaves were picked and boiled in water to produce a rather bitter brew. The leaves were used primarily as a medicine and secondly as a pleasurable drink. It took over 3000 years for tea to become a popular drink throughout the Chinese empire. During the Tang Dynasty (600-900 AD), the popularity of tea was recognized by the imposition of a tax.  

During the Ming Dynasty (1368-1644), steamed and dried loose tea leaves became popular; however, this style of green tea did not keep or travel well outside of China.  To protect their crop, Chinese merchants started to roast their leaves which prevents them from rotting. The leaves that were left in the air to oxidize produced black tea (or red, as the Chinese call it.) This tea was manufactured mainly for export, and the Chinese, even today, continue to drink the native green tea. 

The Dutch were the first to drink tea in Europe, shipping it in 1610, with the introduction to Britain around 1650. It arrived a few years after coffee had reached England. It was through the coffeehouses that the new drink spread to the people. In 1657, Thomas Garway, an English proprietor, had the idea of offering tea to the public, and it quickly became the drink of choice, far outpacing wines and liquors. 

Like Europe, tea initially came to America in the mid-1600s by way of the Dutch settlement of New Amsterdam. The colony was captured by England in 1664 and renamed New York, where the tea trade flourished amongst colonial women and wealthy colonists.

At the same time, the British East India Company had persuaded the English Parliament to implement heavy taxes on tea by way of the Tea Act, to bolster up their failing financial position. This allowed them to ship tea duty-free directly to the colonists and profit by excluding the colonial merchants.

By the early 1700s, the British East India Company ("The Company") established itself as the dominant trading power and would go on to monopolize the tea trade with China. Trading stations sprung up in India, including hubs in Bombay, Bengal, and Madras. The Company, acting as an imperial arm of England, would exercise significant political power in helping to create a wealthy and powerful British Empire. This included not only trading tea, but also the right to annex land, direct troops, and dictate British laws.

The British would exploit the tea trade for profit and political power over the next century. However, geopolitical changed due to involving new American colonies abroad and the French and Indian Wars in 1763 began to threaten The Company's privileged position.  Eventually " The Company" would struggle due to financial mismanagement, corruption, and growing tea smuggling operations.

Unfortunately for the government, Britain soon began to lose all the taxes accompanied with the sale of liquor. They quickly remedied the situation, however, by imposing a tax on tea. Nonetheless, it was not until the early part of the next century that it became a common beverage for the upper and middle classes. When the coffee shops became too disreputable for respectable people, it was in the pleasure gardens of London that royalty, aristocrats, and ordinary working people took tea.  

In 1772, the tea tax was causing problems in Great Britain’s colonies in America. While many other taxes on goods bound for America had been repealed, the three pence per pound of tea remained firm. It was in place to offset the bankrupt British East India Company.

Over five years, the colonies paid duty on almost 2 million pounds of tea. Enraged by the tea tax and other shipping restrictions, The Sons of Liberty attempted to block the shipments of tea from arriving in Philadelphia and New York. On December 16, 1773, The Sons of Liberty let two ships sail into Boston Harbor.  

Disguised as Native American Indians, they emptied 342 large chests of tea into the harbor. This later came to be known as the Boston Tea Party. These actions by the colonists led the Parliament to pass a series of laws known as the “Intolerable Acts”. They limited the political freedom of the citizens and ultimately led to the Revolutionary War. In many ways, tea helped provide a cause for American independence.  

During the 19th century, tea drinking became an essential part of British social life. Tea parties and events were organized for all possible occasions, including family teas, picnic teas, tennis teas and elegant afternoon teas. Over the years, housekeeping manuals and cookbooks gave clear instructions about teatime invitations, etiquette, methods of brewing and serving, dress, and tableware. The tea party was the very symbol of elegance and prosperity.

Around 1823, a British Army Major Robert Bruce stumbled upon indigenous tea bushes growing in the Northeast region of Assam, India. With this discovery of tea, the British East India Company seized the opportunity to experiment with growing tea in not only Assam but also in Darjeeling, a region in Northeastern India at the foot of the Himalayas. A Company employee, Dr. Campbell, first planted Darjeeling tea seeds in his garden at Beechwood, Darjeeling. The planting proved so successful that in 1847 the British government began developing a large number of tea estates in the area. This marked the beginning of a new, flourishing tea industry in India and an end to reliance on Chinese grown tea.

Iced tea originated at the 1904 World's Fair in St. Louis, Missouri. A tea merchant from abroad had intended to provide visitors with free hot tea samples. However, due to the unusually hot weather, it was not a big hit. To promote sales, he asked a nearby ice cream vendor for some ice, which he dumped into the brewed tea. Thus, the American iced tea tradition was born. Today, iced tea makes up around 80% of the entire U.S. tea market sales.