“I SEE NO reason,” the late Sen. Harry Reid (D– Nev.) once declared on the Senate floor, “why those in this country who enjoy drinking tea need someone else to tell them what tastes good.”
Yet for nearly 100 years that is exactly what the government did, thanks to one of the strangest agencies ever to be a part of the federal bureaucracy.
In addition to the usual beverage regulations aimed at ensuring proper storage and safe handling, imported tea was required for decades to pass a literal taste test before it could be sold in the United States. The task fell to a group of Food and Drug Administration (FDA) appointees, who would gather annually in a converted Navy warehouse in Brooklyn to smell, slosh, sip, and spit the various oolongs, greens, and Earl Greys that tea merchants sought to sell to Americans.
This was the federal Board of Tea Experts.
The board’s members would taste dozens of teas over the course of several days. The process was more an art than a science. According to a 1989 Washington Post profile, there was no uniform method for tasting. Some board members worked in silence while others slurped their tea or gargled it loudly. Some preferred to taste the tea hot; others let it cool first. The warehouse where they gathered was outfitted with pictures of old-timey sailing ships, a kitchen sink, several kettles for boiling water, boxes upon boxes of tea, and large windows. The board’s then-leader Robert H. Dick told the Post that to properly inspect the tea, “I have to have a north light.”
When Reid voiced his objection to the tea board in 1995, the agency had already survived two decades’ worth of efforts to shut it down. Congress finally ended the board’s oversight of tea imports a year later, but the federal Board of Tea Experts technically still existed for another 27 years. It was officially terminated on September 19, 2023.
The bizarre history and surprising longevity of the federal tea-tasting board is something of a mixed bag for anyone who wants to see more federal programs iced for
