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{{data|22 November 2018}}

|<poem>World map of tea and coffee preferences

Source: ''The Economist''

== The First Exotic Hot Drink ==

Coffee and tea are so commonplace nowadays that it's hard to imagine they used to be exotic to Europeans. But which exotic drink was the first to make it to Europe? The answer, as it turns out, is neither coffee nor tea; it was cocoa. Native to tropical Central America and a sacred drink for the Aztecs, it was introduced to Europe by the Spaniards shortly after Columbus's discovery of the New World. Like most novel foodstuffs, it was initially treated mostly as medicine. Even as late as 19th century, cocoa was being sold in pharmacies.

It seems that coffee had become well established as a popular drink in Poland by Mickiewicz's time. After all, as you may remember from [[What Has the Battle of Vienna Given Us?|my post about the Battle of Vienna]], the Poles had learned to enjoy coffee already back in the 17th century – from the Ottoman Turks, whom the Polish forces so valiantly vanquished. Or did they? Would they really ape the habits of their enemies? Let's see what another Polish poet had to write about what he called ''kaffa'' two centuries before Mickiewicz:

{{Cytat

| <poem>In Malta, I recall, we have sampled ''kaffa'',

It will blacken your teeth and dry up your tongue.

A brew so disgusting, of heathens uncouth,

| źródło = {{Cyt

| nazwisko = Morsztyn [misattributed to Zbigniew Morsztyn]

{{clear}}

Shocking, isn't it? I mean, many modern Poles hate Muslims just as much as their narrow-minded 17th-century ancestors did, but that doesn't stop them from pigging out on döner kebabs, right?

{{Cytat

| źródło = {{Cyt

| tytuł = Opis obyczajów i&nbsp;zwyczajów za panowania Augusta III

{{Cytat

| źródło = {{Cyt

| nazwisko = Otwinowski

== Tea ==

The words for "tea" in most languages of the world fall into one of two groups: they either sound more or less like ''teh'' or like ''cha''. The English word "tea" is an example of the former, the Russian ''chay'' – of the latter. If you trace the etymologies to their ultimate origins, it turns out that they both come from different dialects of Chinese. There's a popular explanation that the word for tea used in a given place depends on whether tea first arrived there by land or by sea. And it's actually quite accurate. ''Teh'' comes from Amoy, a dialect of the Min Nan branch of Chinese, spoken in the port city of Xiamen on the Taiwan Strait. Dutch traders must have picked it up there and spread the word, as well as tea itself, in western Europe. ''Cha'', on the other hand, is the form used in the northern varieties of Chinese. The word was borrowed from there, at various stages, into Japanese, Korean and Persian. The ''cha'' form was also used in the Cantonese port city of Macau, visited by Portuguese trading vessels, which explains why Portuguese stands out among western European languages and refers to tea as ''chá''. In Persian ''cha'' became ''chay'' and in this form was further borrowed into Russian and thence, into all other Slavic languages.

All other Slavic languages except Polish, that is. The Polish word for tea is ''herbata'', which comes from Latin ''herba thea'', or "tea herb". But it couldn't be that simple. The word for tea may have come from the west, but the word for "kettle" – ''czajnik'' – comes from Russian. Why isn't it called ''herbatnik'', you might ask. Well, this word is already taken; it refers to a biscuit to be served with tea.

As you could see in the map (or mug) at the top of this post, there are only two predominantly tea-drinking regions in Europe: the British Isles in the west and the former Russian Empire in the east. The English tea-drinking tradition dates back to the times when the commodity was still being imported from Asia almost exclusively by Dutch and Portuguese merchants. The first batch of tea appeared in England in 1657, but it's the 1662 marriage of King Charles II, who grew up in the Netherlands, to the Portuguese princess, Catherine of Braganza, that is remembered as the birth of the English tea-drinking culture. Catherine, in particular, was known for inviting her guests for a light meal centered on tea and cakes at (you guessed it) five o'clock.

Tea poured from a little teapot into an even smaller teacup, mixed with a dab of milk and sweetened with sugar – that's just one way of serving tea. The American idea of a tea party, for example, is to dump it all into the ocean, which once peeved the Brits so much that an entire war broke out. What's even worse, no milk was added at all.

The Russian way is different still. First you boil water in a big metal urn called ''samovar'', or "self-boiler". Then you open a tap in the side of the urn to pour the boiling water into a teapot filled with tea leaves and put the pot on top of the ''samovar'', where it continues to be heated by the water. You let the leaves steep for some time until you brew a very strong tea called ''zavarka''. Once it's ready, you pour some ''zavarka'' into glasses (yes, glasses!) and fill with more boiling water from the tap. This way everyone can adjust the strength of their tea to their liking. Each glass is placed in a special metal holder called ''podstakannik'', or "under-glass", so that you don't scorch your fingers. A typical ''podstakannik'' is made of some sort of nickel alloy; in the past, wealthy Russians used to have their ''podstakanniki'' made of silver, but they quickly realized that this metal is too good a heat conductor. So you've got your ''zavarka'' brewed in your ''samovar'', all you need now is to sweeten your tea with some fruits cooked in syrup, known as ''varenye''.

If you looked closely enough at the graph at the top of this post, you may have noticed that Turkey – the country all of Europe learned to drink coffee from – is a tea-drinking nation today. How did this come to pass? The answer, in a nutshell, is World War I happened. The Ottoman Empire lost all of its territorial possessions in the Middle East and all the coffee-growing regions with them. Deprived of easy access to their favourite drink, the Turks looked to the north. Their Muslim neighbours in Soviet Azerbaijan were drinking tea, a custom they had gleaned from the Persians and the Russians. And if tea could be grown as far north as Soviet Georgia, then why not try planting tea bushes on the slopes of Turkish hills overlooking the Black Sea? That's what President Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, the father of the Turkish Republic, thought; and so the Turks had no other choice than to start drinking tea (or ''çay'' in Turkish).

A similar turnaround would later happen in the land down under – but in reverse. Prior to World War II, Australia, as you may have guessed, followed the British example by drinking tea and ignoring coffee as a beverage that was too costly and too difficult to brew. On 3 September 1939, Australia followed British example again by accepting the British declaration of war with Germany as its own (the king could not, after all, be at war and at peace with Germany at the same time). As Australian economy was being geared towards the war effort, basic food supplies – including tea – were rationed, so people had no choice but to drink less of it. At first, the Aussies were mostly helping Britain fight Germany and Italy in Europe and Africa; but as Japan expanded its Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere, threatening Australia itself, the British dominion refocused on the Pacific theatre and tighter coöperation with the United States. Between 1942 and 1945, a total of one million U.S. servicemen were stationed in this country of seven million. While Australian men complained about American G.I. Joes as being "overpaid, oversexed and over here", Australian women were happy to welcome them at home. The only problem was, Americans drank coffee. Newspapers started to offer advice on how to brew it in a way that Americans would enjoy. A Melbourne-based daily wrote that:

{{Cytat

| źródło = {{Cyt

| tytuł = The Argus

{{Cytat

| źródło = {{Cyt

| nazwisko = Kluk

While coffee was seen as a socially acceptable alternative to liquors, tea was mostly recommended as something to wash your throat with after you threw up after having too much vodka.

In the 19th century much of what is now Poland was part of the Russian Empire. The Poles living there may not have liked to admit it, but they adopted much of Russian ways during that time – including Russian tea-drinking culture. By 1843, at least one Pole was ready to acknowledge green tea as better suited to his times than coffee.

{{Cytat

| źródło = {{Cyt

| tytuł = Obrazy litewskie

{{Cytat

| źródło = ''ibid''., p. 33, own translation

| oryg = Czy znowu z&nbsp;samowarem? na co tobie duszko on potrzebny? ja piję z&nbsp;rana wódkę i&nbsp;ty czasami mnie pomagasz; no i&nbsp;kawę zgotujesz, kiedy jaki mości pan przywlecze się {{...}}