When Americans think of the beverage that fueled the American Revolution, they usually picture black tea — but it turns out that green tea was just as popular.The Founding Fathers and their contemporaries drank both types of tea, Bruce Richardson, the Kentucky-based founder of Elmwood Inn Fine Teas, told Fox News Digital.British subjects "were as likely to be drinking green tea as black tea, whether you were in Jane Austen [era] England ...or you were in colonial Boston," he added.WANT TO EAT LIKE THE FOUNDING FATHERS THIS JULY 4TH? HOW TO INCORPORATE THEIR FAVORITE FOODS INTO YOUR HOLIDAY"There were five teas, all from China, because that was the only country that was exporting tea," Richardson said.
"And of those five different teas, two of them were green and three of them were black."Black tea may dominate popular images of colonial America, but historians say green tea was just as common before the Revolution.(iStock; PHAS/Universal Images Group via Getty Images)Richardson, a tea historian who works as the tea master at the Boston Tea Party Ships & Museum, said the five types of tea dumped into Boston Harbor in protest of the Tea Act of 1773 included three black varieties — Bohea, Souchong and Congou — as well as the green teas Hyson and Singlo.CLICK HERE TO SIGN UP FOR OUR LIFESTYLE NEWSLETTERBohea, the most common and least expensive black tea of the era, was often made from older tea leaves harvested after the highest-quality leaves of the season had already been picked.Most of the tea dumped into Boston Harbor was Bohea, Richardson said — and it was so ubiquitous that he compared it to the way Kleenex has become synonymous with tissues today.The Boston Tea Party targeted shipments containing five different tea varieties, including two green teas and three black teas.
(iStock; Bettmann via Getty Images)"It was so common that often teapots at the time, or some that I've seen, would say Bohea on the side of the teapot," he said."If they wanted t...