Tea connoisseurs will balk at anyone that says a tea bag is the best way to make a good cuppa tea.  But tea bags don’t seem to be going anywhere. The convenience of the tea bag is undeniable. And in the past few years we’ve seen companies innovate new shapes and materials for bags, starting with PG Tips pyramids, that help improve the taste to get it more like loose leaf brewed.

Supposedly the tea bag turns 100 this year….

But actually a little in-depth research of the sort print media so rarely does these days shows it’s more like 104 years since a tea sample was first delivered in a silk sachet. And mass commercial production of paper tea bags didn’t take off until the 1950s.

I’ve heard it said that the tea bag became in vogue in Britain after the war because the sewer systems couldn’t take all the loose tea, and mandating tea bags was the best way to get people to dump their tea leaves into the garbage rather than down the drain. However, I haven’t been able to prove that.

So what do you prefer – bag or loose leaf?

Is it really 100 years since tea was first dangled in a sachet? | Life and style | guardian.co.uk

Tags: teahistory