Just think: in the one second you took to read the title of this post; 25000 cups of tea had been drunk all over the world. Tea is the most popular beverage in the world - second only to bottled water. The Chinese invented tea-brewing probably before the 2nd century BC. They were, (and are) the largest tea producers of the world. For thousands of years, they enjoyed quiet cups of tea till about the 17th century, when suddenly, the whole world went gaga about the brewed liquid. What caused this large-scale globalization?