Tea reached Europe through Portugal before it reached anyone else. From 1557, Macau was Portugal's own gateway to China — a small trading post that, for over four centuries, was the crossing point between two worlds. Portuguese ships carried tea west along that route long before it was fashionable anywhere else on the continent.
When the Portuguese princess Catherine of Braganza sailed to London in 1662 to marry Charles II, she brought her tea-drinking habit with her — and is widely credited with setting the fashion that turned tea into a British institution.
A little over two centuries later, that same route closed a loop. In 1878, the Azorean island of São Miguel had tea bushes but no one who knew how to process the leaf. The Society for the Promotion of São Miguel Agriculture sent for two tea masters from Macau — Lau-a-Pan and Lau-a-Teng — who taught the techniques that, by 1883, had grown into Gorreana: Europe's first tea garden, and still one of only two tea estates on the continent today.
Meridiana traces that same route — from the gardens of China, through the Portuguese ports that first carried tea west, to the only tea grown on European soil.
Today, we source loose leaf tea from those same origins — wholesale, for hotels, restaurants and specialty retailers across Europe.
China and the Azores are Meridiana’s first story, not its only one — the same approach will carry future collections to new origins.
