Guest Blog: The Tea Fancier - Portsmouth Tea and History of Portsmouth

I was in Portsmouth last weekend. I asked on social media for tea-related recommendations for the area, and lots of lovely people leapt in to give me recommendations. Alexis from Portsmouth-based Tea Mountain and Portsmouth Tea was a wealth of helpful suggestions, recommending places to have a brew and places of historical significance linked to Catherine de Braganza.

Catherine de Braganza was a Portuguese princess who came to England in 1662 to marry Charles II. Queen Catherine is the woman who introduced tea-drinking to Britain. Having a cuppa was already an established thing in the royal court at Portugal. So, naturally, the first thing she wanted when she landed at Portsmouth was a nice cup of tea. Where she was presumably met with blank stares and shrugs.

Can you imagine that? Travelling hundreds of miles across sea to marry some bloke you don’t know, and there isn’t even a brew waiting for you when you get there? Luckily Catherine was carrying some tea leaves ‘for personal use’, so the immediate crisis was averted. She swiftly instructed more tea to be shipped from her homeland.

I think it’s fair to say that Catherine de Braganza is one of Tea Fancier’s heroes. Although it’s probable that if she hadn’t made tea trendy, someone else probably would have, but you can’t deny that she is a significant player in the History of Tea.

Inspired by Tea Mountain’s recommendations, I took myself on a self-orchestrated Catherine de Braganza trail in Old Portsmouth, starting with Sally Port, where she landed.

We then visited Portsmouth Cathedral to view the birth certificate of Charles II and Catherine de Braganza. It turns out that the original is on long-term loan to the Portsmouth Museum, but the very lovely Canon Precentor of the cathedral showed us the facsimile they have.

Wedding Certificate of James the second and Catherine de Braganza — It’s very swirly.

We also visited the Royal Garrison Church, where Charles and Catherine married. The church is undergoing renovation at the moment and is missing a whole roof. I’m going out a limb here but I reckon it probably had a top to it when they held a royal wedding here.

So, where, you may be wondering, does Portsmouth Tea (the tea I am actually supposed to be reviewing here) fit into all of this? Well, it was sort of a souvenir of my lovely bank holiday weekend in Portsmouth. Given that Alexis the Tea Mountain Man inspired me on my Catherine de Braganza tea-history quest, I thought it should be only right and proper that I tried some of his tea.

And I’m very glad I did because it is absolutely lovely. I was surprised by how lovely it was because the tea leaves are very, very small, and I always look askance at loose-leaf tea that looks like it belongs inside a tea bag. But my misgivings were unfounded. The brew is a rich, flavourful blend with a toasty, malty depth of flavour that makes it a pleasure to drink.

It is a blend of Assam broken pekoe and Zimbabwean tea, which, as you would expect, makes for a dark and robust cup of tea that is entirely amenable to a splash of milk.

Portsmouth Tea is not the sort of tea that Catherine de Braganza would have drunk. India and Zimbabwe were not tea-producing nations in the seventeenth century when all tea still came from China.

But drinking a cup of good tea nevertheless reminds me why a woman who was brought up drinking tea was so very keen to introduce it to the non-tea-drinking nation that she became queen of.

Thanks, your majesty. It was a good shout. I think we Brits took to it rather enthusiastically.

Today’s featured book(let) is Portsmouth and The East India Company in the Eighteenth Century by James H Thomas, part of The Portsmouth Papers published by Portsmouth City Council and purchased at the Portsmouth Museum.