Modern Tea
In around 1908, Thomas Sullivan, a New York organic tea merchant, started to send samples of tea to his customers in small silken bags. Some assumed that these were supposed to be used in the same way as the metal infusers, by putting the entire bag into the pot, rather than emptying out the contents. It was thus by accident that the tea bag was born! Responding to the comments from his customers that the mesh on the silk was too fine, Sullivan developed sachets made of gauze - the first purpose-made tea bags. During the 1920s these were developed for commercial production, and the bags grew in popularity in the USA. Made first of all from gauze and later from paper, they came in two sizes, a larger bag for the pot, a smaller one for the cup. The features that we still recognize today were already in place - a string that hung over the side so the bag could be removed easily, with a decorated tag on the end. (UK Tea Council)
To supply the global demand for whole leaf organic tea and especially for dust teas for tea bags, organic tea cultivation moved to other countries in Asia, Africa and even S. America.
Another development that grew from organic tea bags was the invention of a faster processing method for tea - Cut, Torn, Curled teas or CTCs. CTC processing combines the many steps of Orthodox tea processing into one fast machine.
