At SAHANA DIVA, we believe a good product starts with curiosity. When you pick up a cup of tea, you’re not just choosing a flavour, you’re joining a 5,000-year conversation that began with emperors, travelled with monks and merchants, and finally took root on Nigeria’s highest plateau.
This is why tea commands global respect, who truly “started it”, and what science says it does for you.
1. The World History of Tea Where it began
the China-Myanmar borderlands
The tea plant, Camellia sinensis, is native to the intersection of southwest China, Tibet, north Myanmar and northeast India. The earliest credible drinking record dates to China’s Shang dynasty, where tea was consumed as a medicinal concoction.
Chinese legend credits Emperor Shennong around 2737 BCE: leaves blew into his boiling water, he drank, and found it restorative mark the word “RESTORATIVE” later using it as an antidote to poisons.
Archaeology supports the story: tea leaves were found in the mausoleum of Emperor Jing of Han (2nd century BCE), confirming Han dynasty medicinal use.
From medicine to culture
• Han (206 BCE – 220 AD): first written reference to boiling tea appears in Wang Bao’s “Contract for a Youth”.
• Tang dynasty (618-907): Lu Yu wrote Cha Jing (The Classic of Tea). He described cultivation, processing, and tasting — tea became widespread, pressed into bricks used as currency.
• Song dynasty (960-1279): steaming gave way to loose-leaf brewing and powdered whisked tea — the origin of today’s steeped cup.
• Ming dynasty (1368-1644): pan-firing stopped oxidation, creating green tea; later partial oxidation created oolong, full oxidation created black tea.
Buddhist monks carried seeds to Japan in 805 (Saichō) and 806 (Kūkai). In 1191, Zen priest Eisai brought seeds to Kyoto and wrote Kissa Yōjōki (1211), opening with: “Tea is the ultimate mental and medical remedy”.
Korea adopted tea offerings by 661 AD in royal ancestral rites.
Tea reaches the West
• 1557: Portugal opens Macau; word of “chá” spreads. Portuguese missionary Gaspar da Cruz published the first Portuguese account in 1560.
• Early 1600s: Dutch East India Company brings green tea to Amsterdam; France knows tea by 1636.
• 1650s Britain: tea sold in London coffeehouses; Samuel Pepys records his first cup in 1660. By 1750 it was Britain’s national drink, sweetened with Caribbean sugar.
Tea became so valuable it shaped empires. To break China’s monopoly, the British East India Company introduced commercial production to India. Plants discovered in Assam in 1824 led to plantations from 1836, using Chinese seeds at first, then native Assam varieties. India did not widely drink tea until the 1950s India Tea Board campaign.
By the 19th century, tea funded taxes, sparked the Opium Wars, and created plantation economies in Ceylon (Sri Lanka), Kenya, and beyond.
Why the world embraced it: three simple traits
1. Adaptability — green, black, oolong, white, pu-erh from the same leaf, just different processing.
2. Ritual — from Chinese gongfu to Japanese chanoyu to British afternoon tea, it creates pause and connection.
3. Function — mild caffeine for alertness without coffee’s jitter, plus a complex flavour that pairs with milk, lemon, spices, or nothing at all.
FINALLY, Tea Comes Home:
(The Nigerian Story)
Nigeria is not a historic tea-drinking culture like China or Britain, but nature gave us one perfect place: the Mambilla Plateau in Taraba State (where SAHANA DIVA was born) the 1,600 metres high, cool mist, volcanic soil, rainfall measured in seasons.
1974-1975: The big dream
“The plantation was born in 1974” during Nigeria’s oil-boom era. Foreign experts were invited, “Kenyan tea clones were planted” and factories built in the cool hills of Gembu. Contemporary accounts date introduction to “as far back as 1975 when tea was imported from Kenya”.
The venture operated first under the Northern Nigerian Development Corporation as Nigerian Beverages Company Limited, later as Nigerian Beverages Production Company. For years it worked, and Highland Tea became one of the few Nigerian agricultural brands with genuine industrial pedigree.
Decline and rescue
Under Governor Darius Ishaku (2015-2023), the Tunga hydropower plant gave the factory stable electricity for the first time in decades. Today the estate remains “the only large-scale tea plantation in West Africa”, with about 615 hectares under tea, a factory capacity of 1.6 million kg per year, and over 2,000 direct jobs in 27 surrounding villages.
For SAHANA DIVA consumers, this matters: your tea does not travel 8,000 km from Kenya or China by default. It comes from Kakara, Gembu, where Nigerian hands pluck leaves at dawn in near-temperate air.
What science says about health benefits
Modern research does not treat tea as magic, but as a consistent source of bioactive polyphenols.
• Antioxidant capacity:
consumption of Camellia sinensis has been correlated with low incidence of chronic pathologies such as cardiovascular disease and cancer, in which oxidative stress plays a critical role. Green tea catechins and black tea theaflavins are responsible for this activity.
• Measured effect in humans: as early as 1996, 300 mL of black or green tea significantly increased plasma non-enzymatic antioxidant capacity within hours.
• Metabolic support: beyond redox properties, tea catechins and theaflavins show ability to lower glucose, lipid and uric acid levels via enzyme inhibition (e.g., HMG-CoA reductase, xanthine oxidase) and interaction with glucose transporters. Epigallocatechin gallate (EGCG) is the most active compound in these pathways.
• Other documented actions: anti-inflammatory modulation, improved endothelial function, mild thermogenesis, and support for oral health due to antibacterial polyphenols. Green tea typically contains the highest catechin levels (EGCG ∼27 mg per 100 mL), black tea offers theaflavins formed during fermentation.
Important nuance: benefits appear with regular, moderate consumption (2-3 cups daily), brewed 3-5 minutes at near-boiling for black tea, 70-80°C for green. Adding milk can drastically reduce antioxidant availability.
SAHANA DIVA note: we share information, not prescriptions. If you manage a condition or take medication, speak with a healthcare professional.
5. Why This History Builds Trust in SAHANA DIVA
1. Heritage with provenance. We source with awareness of the Mambilla story — a Nigerian terroir that rivals East Africa’s highlands, not an anonymous import.
2. Transparency. Knowing tea’s journey from Shennong’s myth to Kakara’s factory helps you ask better questions: Where was it grown? How was it processed? How fresh is the leaf?
3. Function meets culture. Tea’s global celebration is not marketing hype; it survived dynasties, wars, and empires because it delivers calm alertness, digestive comfort, and a moment of ritual — values SAHANA DIVA builds into every blend.
4. Local impact. Choosing Nigerian-grown tea supports out-grower communities on the plateau, keeps value chains short, and reduces carbon miles.
