Subscribe to our newsletter. Considering that we had just overthrown our previous government partially over the leafy liquid, the new government felt it important to make sure we did not have too many bad tea days. So, in 1897, Congress passed the Imported Tea Act and created the Board of Tea Experts, headed by the office of the Federal Tea-taster. Strolling among the clipper ships in New York Harbor, the Federal Tea-taster, constantly alert for poor quality, pauses to allow the bracing ocean breeze to send the aroma wafting through his finely trained nostrils as he sips a fine Ceylonese orange pekoe.
Life is good.
Perhaps we suspected the British, still smarting from the Revolutionary War, would try to get us back with a sneak assault of some awfully off Oolong. Despite the valiant efforts of the Federal Tea-taster in rejecting 1 percent of all tea tasted in 1995, the Clinton Administration ousted the position in 1996 as part of its Reinventing Government program. American tea-sippers, be careful out there. All of Chapter 2 was repealed in 1996. Since the federal government is no longer looking out for you, tea drinker need more advice.