I’m headed to Scotland this month, so here’s a triptych of tea tales from the land of tartan.

The thief: Robert Fortune

Botanist Robert Fortune (1812-1880) was born in the Scottish borderlands of Berwickshire and came to prominence in the mid-1800s for his work in China, where he disguised himself as a Chinese merchant and travelled around the country to uncover the secrets of tea.

His fruitful bout of commercial espionage helped British botanists understand that all tea came from the same plant, Camellia sinensis, and that different processing methods were responsible for the different ‘colours’ of tea. This led to the successful establishment of tea estates in British-controlled India and the end of China’s monopoly on the tea trade.

Read: For All the Tea in China by Sarah Rose (2010)

The tea room mogul: Catherine Cranston

Catherine ‘Kate’ Cranston (1849-1934) was the daughter of a baker and hotelier, and sister to a tea dealer, who found her niche hosting tea rooms in Glasgow. The temperance movement, which sought to provide social spaces other than male-centred pubs, helped her turn her tea rooms into hubs for the community.

She is known as a prominent patron of the architects and designers George Walton and Charles Rennie Mackintosh, who worked together on her tea rooms and, upon her death, having no children, bequeathed two-thirds of her estate to Glasgow’s poor. She is the first non-royal woman to appear on a Scottish £20 banknote (pictured above).

Visit: Mackintosh at The Willow, 215-217 Sauchiehall Street, Glasgow

The queen: Alexandrina Victoria

It was Queen Victoria (1819-1901) who popularised English breakfast tea, according to Kaori O’Connor, author of The English Breakfast, but did you know that the blend was originally Scottish? The queen initially enjoyed the hearty blend of black teas at her Scottish residence in Balmoral and was given a supply fit for a queen on her return to London. She drank it, the fashionable set followed suit and it became widespread in England and thus acquired the ‘English’ descriptor.

These days, Scottish breakfast tea is blended with bolder teas compared to its ‘English’ counterpart, on account of the softer water in the north.

Read: The English Breakfast by Kaori O’Connor (2013)

This article originally appeared in AUSTCS enews 6 August 2024.