While the history of tea dates back 2300 years and the history of Peerless dates only 80+ years, the devotion and expertise we have in the art of tea is parallel. For over 80 years, Peerless has sourced the world's finest teas to be offered to our customers. The search takes us around the world each year but we always find our way back home to the tea cup. Our Philosophy is simple; source the best and deliver fresh. John Vukasin established that philosophy and we have continued to live by it through our third generation of Vukasins.

A brief history of tea...

...begins in China around the year 2700 BC, when a few leaves from a tea plant fall into a pot of water being boiled by Sheng Neng, the Chinese Emperor. One taste of the resulting brew and the love affair between tea and China is born, eventually leading to tea being declared China's national drink during the Tang Dynasty (7th c. AD). It was during this time that the poet Lu Wu wrote the first book on tea, called "Ch'a Ching" or "The Holy Scripture of Tea" where he describes how the best tea leaves must "...unfold like a mist rising out of a ravine, gleam like a lake touched by a zephyr, and be wet and soft like fine earth newly swept by rain."

The Buddhist priest, Saicho, who returned from China with tea seeds to plant in his native land, introduced tea to Japan in the year 805 AD. Through the Buddhist monks, tea spread through Japan and South East Asia, to eventually be discovered by Europeans in 1610 AD. It wasn't until the British East India Company reached China in 1637 that tea became a highly sought after and expensive commodity. Unlike the Chinese, the British favored fully fermented black teas that were made more pleasing to the palate (and less apt to break precious bone china teacups) with the introduction of cooling milk or lemon and sugar.

It was only a matter of time before this wonderful new drink found its way to the New World, where it was enjoyed mainly by wealthy colonists. In fact, this popularity caused the British government to impose a tea tax on behalf of the East India Company to stem the tide of less expensive teas being smuggled into the colonies from Holland. The resulting conflict led to the famous night of December 16, 1773, when disguised colonists boarded the East India Company's ships and dumped their entire consignment of tea into the Boston Harbor.

Despite this setback, America continues to contribute to the history of tea, when Richard Blechynden creates iced tea for the St. Louis World Fair in 1904, and again, when Thomas Sullivan inadvertently invents the tea bag by forgetting to inform his New York customers that the silk sample bags he has packaged his tea leaves in must be removed before steeping.

A brief introduction to tea types

The beverage tea is created by steeping the dried leaves or buds of the Camellia sinensis in hot water. All commercial varieties of tea are represented by three Camellia sinensis plants: the China type, the India (Assam region) type, and a cross breed of those two types called the Hybrid type. From these three varieties come the four major types of tea: White, Green, Oolong and Black, with the only difference among the types being the method of processing the tea leaves undergo. Also, every flavored or blended tea begins with one of these four types as a base, but by adding flowers, oils, herbs or grain, a new and unique flavor is created. Amazingly, Americans drink 140 million cups of tea each day and 80% of that is in the form of iced tea.