China remained the exclusive tea exporter to the world for centuries, with the agricultural production of tea a closely guarded secret. However, as early as the late 1600s, ships of the British East India Company were exporting small quantities of tea from China to Great Britain. It was the Dutch, though, who began the wholesale importation of tea to Europe via its vast fleet of ships. By 1606, there was a well-established trade route for tea from China via the Indonesian island of Java to Holland. It was at this time that tea first arrived in Paris in the early 1600s as a Dutch import. This was several years before tea became fashionable in Great Britain.
Since several of France’s colonies raised coffee beans as a cash crop, there was a relative abundance of coffee that could be enjoyed by the aristocracy as well as the general population. It is said that King Louis XIV, the Sun King, was influenced by the Turkish Ambassador to drink many cups of coffee each day. Tea, however, remained a rare commodity, and for years, only the very wealthy could afford it. As a result, coffeehouses in France numbered in the hundreds and served as meeting places where males could congregate and discuss politics and philosophy. Tea salons, on the other hand, were few and far between. They catered primarily to very wealthy women who patronized the salons dressed in their finest apparel. It appeared that this activity was as much to be seen as it was to enjoy the drinking of the tea.
Then in 1639, Cardinal Mazarin, a chief minister to Louis XIV, began drinking imported green tea to treat his gout. Once he observed the green tea’s beneficial effects on Mazarin’s gout, Louis XIV gave up coffee in favor of green tea. As this became public knowledge, medical professionals of the day began prescribing green tea as the treatment of choice for everything from headaches to digestive problems.
Louis XIV was not the only French aristocrat to enjoy the benefits of tea. [For more about tea drinking among French royalty, especially King Louis XV’s first wife, Queen Marie Leczinska, see “Luxuriously Intimate” on page 61 of this issue.] Madame de Sauigne, a member of the Royal Court, described in a series of letters written to her daughter the incredible effects of tea on Monsieur de Landgrave, an elderly dying man. “His 40 cups of green tea literally brought him back from the dead right before my eyes.”
