GIVEAWAY DAY 1: China

International Tea Day Giveaway ✨ CHINA 🇨🇳

Chinese tea culture is steeped with rich history, tradition and lore. It is said that 5000 years ago a tea leaf blew into a boiling kettle from a nearby Camellia sinensis plant - the flowering evergreen shrub that is indigenous to China and the species from which all tea comes. It is not enough to say that tea has cultural significance in China...rather tea has shaped Chinese culture.
 
The Chinese were the first recorded to have discovered and utilized the tea leaf. Although the original purpose was not simply for drinking pleasure, but as medicine to both treat conditions and prevent disease. To this day, tea is used in Traditional Chinese Medicine and Herbalism, quite notably prescribed to “brighten the eyes.” Part of the medicine is not only in the consumption, but in the philosophy. The Chinese have contributed “Cha dao” to the world...'cha' meaning tea and 'dao' meaning way - essentially considering tea as more than a drink, but as a way of life. From times of ancient Dynasty to present, tea has much to do with ritual and ceremony in China and incorporated into meditation.
 
China is a vast country with variable geography: weather, soil, slope, aspect, as well as local histories. This led to many different tea cultivars.
 
Yunnan Province is known as the birthplace of tea! This region is where cultivation first began. This south westerly province encompasses a splendour of tea terraces surrounded by snow-capped mountains, lakes and deep karst limestone topography as well as a diversity of peoples. Yunnan is known for many popular varieties of what we refer to as black tea, but what is known in China as red tea. Yunnan is also known for Puerh – a fermented and caked tea with unique and robust flavour. There is official stipulation that only tea produced in Yunnan can be truly called Puerh.

Many Westholme Blends are crafted with teas from Yunnan Province. You will also find a handful of pure teas among our Teas of the World collection which we have selected to highlight the Yunnan terroir. When you drink a Yunnan tea, imagine the wisdom of millennia that is held in the tea plants!

When you purchase in-store or online today, enjoy a complimentary gift pouch with a tea from Yunnan!