Inherited Habit of tea drinking in Portugal

Soon after the Portuguese made landfall in Japan in 1542, the first accounts were sent back to Europe, saying that people in the Far East drank hot water. These early reports created a stir in Europe, where hot beverages such as tea, coffee and cocoa were still quite unknown. The Western amazement about the drinking of hot water became the very first topic of conversation when the first Japanese embassy in the West opened in Europe on November 14th, 1584. At the time, Phillip II was the king of both Portugal and Spain. After months at sea, four emissaries from Japan travelled overland to the royal residence northwest of Madrid.

The Japanese diplomats entered the Escorial bearing various gifts, and the first item they presented to the king was a porcelain sake cup. The Jesuit priest escorting the Japanese emissaries explained to Phillip II that the cup was used for drinking rice wine. To this the king replied, “How is that? Do they not drink hot water?” The escort explained to the king, “Yes, but the Japanese also make wine”. Then the king inquired, “Do the Japanese drink hot water only in wintertime?” To this the priest replied that they always drank hot water. This confirmation of the many Portuguese reports about the drinking of hot water in the Far East amazed the Iberian king. The eye-witness account continues: “And it is not without reason that the king was surprised, for verily the Japanese drink hot water both in the summer and in the winter, and in the winter they sometimes drink it chilled with snow.”

All the parochial European astonishment about hot water somehow came to overshadow the news about tea itself. The Portuguese Jesuits did send reports home about tea and its properties, but it took quite some time for the Occidental audience to take notice. The very first mention of tea did not reach Europe by way of the high seas, but via the Silk Road. A Venetian text published in 1559 records the account of a Persian merchant named Chaggi Memet, who spoke of a plant which he called “the chai of Cathay”. He reported that this plant was exceedingly popular in China: “They boil this herb, dried or fresh, in water. Taking one or two cups of this decoction on an empty stomach alleviates fever, headache, stomach ache, pain in the sides or joints, whilst drinking it as hot as you can bear it. He said that, moreover, this stuff was good for countless other ailments, most of which he could not even remember, though gout was one of them. If the stomach feels bloated and heavy from having over-eaten, then drinking just a bit of this decoction will help digest the food in a short time. It is so dear and highly valued that nobody travels without it.” The word sent by Jesuits from Japan had an even greater impact, and the first tea leaves themselves came to Europe not by way of the Silk Road, but directly from the Far East. The Portuguese word for tea, cha, is taken directly from the Japanese word. Writing on October 14th, 1564 from what today is Oita prefecture in north eastern Kyushu, the Portuguese Jesuit Luís d’Almeida became the first European to describe powdered green tea or matcha: “It is the custom amongst the noble and wealthy Japanese, when they receive a visitor of any consequence, that upon his parting they will show him their most precious pieces of ceramics as a final show of affection: these being all vessels with which they drink a certain finely ground herb, which they have the custom of drinking and which is delicious and which is called chà.

The way to drink it to place half a nutshell of the powder of this finely ground herb in a porcelain cup and then mix it up with the very hot water and then drink it.” It would take nearly half a century before tea would first be brought to Europe. In 1610, small quantities of tea leaves as well as Japanese green powder tea in earthenware jars were brought to Holland via Batavia, as Jakarta was then called, by the Dutch East India Company.