Tea Party Live – Russian Caravan – Caracas Tea & Co

English Version

On June 1st, we had a & “live” on Instagram to talk about the history of the

Russian Caravan Tea.

It is said that tea was introduced to Russia in the 16th century by the Mongolian ruler, the
Great Khan, who sent a gift to the Tsar, Michael Fedorovich. It is said that when the Great Khan
gave the casket to the Russian servant he did not want to carry it, since he claimed that it was
useless to carry on a long journey like this a box with dead leaves as a present. Nevertheless,
he had to take the present to the Tsar, which resulted to be a true gift since for the Tsar it was
a captivating drink and so the commercial relations with China began with the importation of
tea in exchange of leathers.

Where does the name of this blend come from?

While famous blends such as English Breakfast, or Earl Grey that were created under an
intention, which are known as the Breakfast Tea, in the Russian Caravan although all its tea
leaves come from China but its name refers to the caravans of camels and horses of the 17th
and 18th centuries that traveled enormous transcontinental distances, something like
10,000.00 kilometers, along this great route of Tea to take it from China to Russia. This took
the travelers from Kashgar behind the Chinese wall through the Gobi desert to Urga in
Mongolia covering the total of 6,000.00 miles, the conditions for most of the trip were hard, it
is said that the tea leaves, acquired an additional smoky flavor as a result of all the fires lit on
the road, these caravans could take a year and a half; from a purist point of view, one could
think that by the time the tea arrived it was totally ruined since on the way the tea had been
completely modified.

But a tea with woody, smoky and sweet tones like chocolate was very familiar to the Russians. Tea came to Russia in the form of loose leaf and compressed.

Dates like 1706, 1727 and 1786 where the treaty of Nerchinsk and Kyakta appears. Russia
would increase its purchases of tea from China, but in 1706 Peter the Great appeared who
made trade with Beijing illegal for Russian traders, 1736 Catherine the Great established
regular imports with China, which by that time through the caravans were 3,000,000 pounds.
By 1860 the price of tea began to decline, when the first stage of the Trans-Siberian Railway
began, this train service allowed tea to arrive faster than in the caravans, where it took 18
months and with this new transport system it would take a week.

Russian Caravan was born accidentally because of its journey in the caravans, when the train
was ready had to replicate the flavors of everything that happened in the journey of the
caravans. Currently, there are a variety of blends of Russian Caravan, as well as English
Breakfast.

So how to compose a mixture of Russian Caravan today?

There are different options but a great variety of black teas are used, high oxidation oolong
and although green tea is not a big protagonist we can only make the exception with
Gunpower green tea.

Tea suggestions for a Russian Caravan

Lapsang
Kemmun Panda
Pu-erh
High oxidation Oolong
Gunpower
Assam
Darjeeling
Black tea from Yunan

Recipe:

10 grs of Lapsang
5 grs of Pu-erh
10 grs of Black Tea from Temi state in India