Tea discovered in museum dates back to 17th century

The oldest tea in Britain, a box of leaves and flowers neatly labelled "a sort of tea from China" more than 300 years ago, has turned up in the stores of the Natural History Museum in London.

When it was brought back by James Cuninghame, a Scottish surgeon and amateur naturalist in the late 17th century, tea was still a fabulous rarity, sold at between six and 60 shillings a pound, 10 times the price of even the best coffee.

Cuninghame was a passionate plant hunter, and may have collected his samples at Amoy in Fujian province, or on the island of Chusan where he described tea growing wild and the local farmers preparing the leaves for the drink.

Academics from Queen Mary's University London uncovered his samples while researching the history of the exotic import which rapidly became the British national drink, for a book to be published this summer. They yearned to taste it but were not even allowed to touch the tea. Instead, the glass lid of the small box was lifted, and they were permitted to sniff the contents.

"It had a very, very faint scent of hay," one of the academics, Matthew Mauger, said.

"In the 18th century, writers struggling to describe this exotic new drink do refer to the smell of hay," his co-author Richard Coulton said. "Fresh tea really doesn't last very long - I doubt it would be drinkable."