What do we call this drink?
Depending on which website you read, kombucha was invented in China, discovered by a Korean doctor, given to an emperor, or has existed for thousands of years. The real history is far less certain, but even more interesting.
We make and drink чайный гриб (pronounced chaynyy grib). I like it. I have read many places on the internet where it is referred to as Чайный квас (chaynyy kvass), and many westerners refer to it as 'Kombucha'. Whatever you call it, this is a great drink, and Like many traditional household ferments, it is also surprisingly cheap to make. Like many common things, the history of kombucha is surprisingly intriguing.
We don’t know definitively where kombucha originated, nor do we know how it got its popular western name 'Kombucha'.
It is noteworthy that Kombucha is not the same as Japanese kelp tea, which is confusingly called 'konbu-cha' or 'kobu-cha'. Kelp tea is a tea made from kelp, kombucha is made from fermenting tea.
The history of kombucha is interesting. I will split this into parts, recent and verifiable history, and older history that needs a little deciphering. All of the history is fascinating, and while we cannot prove exactly where kombucha originated, the earliest reliable records I can find point to Russia and Siberia as the first documented home of kombucha.
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| Some of my traditionally made kombucha |
The Mystery of the Name Kombucha
While we cannot know exactly where kombucha first developed, the earliest reliable records we have of the drink are from Russia in the early 1800s. We know that kombucha entered the western nations through Russia. We know when and how it left Russia, and we know where it went once it left Russia. This part of kombucha history is not under any debate.
We also know in Russia it was (as it still is today) referred to as чайный гриб, which translates to something like 'tea fungus'. In English this would be pronounced something like chaynyy grib. This is what everyone grew up hearing it called. Sometimes it is just called grib, which means something like 'mushroom' or 'fungus'. Today in places where people speak more English, when talking about kombucha I hear people say things like ‘we used to have our own mushroom’ meaning that they used to brew kombucha at home. I am yet to hear anyone Slavic call it kombucha. The name чайный гриб has been used for so many generations of Russians that, if it did have a previous name, it was well and truly lost that name generations before leaving Russia.
It makes no sense that when going from Russia to Germany and further west that it would revert from the commonly used name чайный гриб to an unused previous name of 'kombucha' that no one ever used or even remembered. Logically, it could keep the name чайный гриб, or take one or more translated versions of чайный гриб, or possibly get a new name entirely. It seems far more realistic that the name kombucha is a completely new name that it was given after it left Russia, and it had never been called that before.
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| My kombucha in a jar with a tap |
The Earliest Documented Records: Kombucha in Siberia
The available historical evidence points most strongly toward Russia and Siberia as the earliest documented home of kombucha.
Evidence strongly suggests that kombucha was popular from the early 1800s in Siberia. Kombucha appears to have been a familiar household ferment in many parts of Siberia, passed between families in much the same way other traditional cultures were. It seems like many households had it, the babushkas made it with leftover tea and ladled it out for the family. This makes sense as the samovar was an integral part of Russian life, every family drank a lot of tea. Russians did not waste food, and left over tea was used to make kombucha. This was a folk medicine to keep the family healthy and strong.
While there are several references to kombucha, there isn't a huge amount written from back then as most commoners were illiterate, and kombucha was so common that no one really bothered to write about it. Still, there are some references to it, most mention it in an off hand way as if they assume that everyone knows of this common thing.
Tea would have been expensive in those days, but many babushkas still made kombucha for their families to keep them healthy. We know that tea was in Siberia in the 1600s but it was expensive, and that people also made tea substitute using Bergenia crassifolia (and a few other plants). Because B crassifolia was traditionally used as a tea substitute in Siberia, it is possible that some households used similar substitutes when making fermented tea drinks, although direct historical evidence is limited. This plant was native to Siberia, and would have been easily obtainable by everyone in that area, so it is possible that some households could have made fermented tea-like drinks even when traditional tea was prohibitively expensive.
In 1835 a Russian government official was sent to Irkutsk, Siberia. As documented in the 1835 travel diaries of Russian researcher and official P. R. Stantsevich during his expedition:
“Irkutsk is an amazing city. Here tea is drunk not only hot, as is customary for us, but also cold, insisting that it has a slippery cake, like a mushroom that grows on rotten stumps. However, the drink is quite tasty, similar to our Vyazma kvass.”
This description closely resembles kombucha as we know it today, although it does not explicitly name the culture. It is highly likely that this was referring to kombucha, and if so this is one of the first written records of kombucha. This description is important because it is not a legend written centuries later, nor was it a marketing ploy. It is a contemporary observation from someone describing an everyday household drink.
From Siberia, kombucha spread throughout Russia, and then seems to have started spreading out of Russia and went a little further west as mentioned above.
This is where the documented history of kombucha ends. We know kombucha was in Siberia in the early 1800s. Everything older than this needs a bit of consideration and guess work.
From Russian Household Ferment to European Health Tonic
We know that kombucha spread to the world at large from western Europe, and we know that it reached western Europe from Russia.
In the 1910's there is mention of kombucha in Poland, with various newspaper articles and classified ads mentioning a “Japanese mushroom”. There is broad agreement that this kombucha had not come from Japan, but had come from Russia. Back then, people would name things to sound mysterious and foreign. Adding the name 'Japanese' helped things to sound more decadent, much like how the tomato called Japanese Black Trifele is actually an old heirloom Russian variety of tomato. When things sound mysterious and ancient they tend to sell better.
From there kombucha began to gain popularity across Europe. By World War I there start being reports in newspapers of kombucha being used as a 'health tonic'. Kombucha appears to have become increasingly known in Germany and other parts of Europe after the First World War, likely helped by contact between Russia and Europe during this period. I have read various internet claims that when soldiers and prisoners of war returned from Russia they brought the culture with them. To put this in perspective, penicillin was not available until 1928, which was after World War I had ended.
Interestingly, after kombucha left Russia it was thought of as a 'health tonic' or 'medicine', it was sold as a 'cure all' that almost had magical properties.
There are scattered accounts of folk practices surrounding kombucha, including attempts to increase its perceived potency through religious symbolism. I read several accounts of people in Italy stealing holy water to use in kombucha in an attempt to make it more potent. I also read that this caused a stir, and all kinds of efforts were made to prevent people doing this.
This seems to have been a local cultural practice rather than something connected to kombucha itself. In Orthodox communities, holy water has traditionally had a different cultural role, including being used in households. Holy water is freely given out in Eastern Orthodox churches, and people commonly use holy water to cook with or drink sips of it each morning. No one really writes about cooking with holy water as it is such a common practice that it doesn't need to be said.
It is possible that using holy water in kombucha was also practiced in pre-Soviet Russia, but this is difficult to prove because ordinary household practices were rarely recorded. Much like orthodox Christians using holy water in cooking is so common nowadays that no one bothers to write about it, using holy water to brew kombucha back then would likely have been so common that no one would have bothered to write about it.
It seems once kombucha left Russia it spread in almost every direction by multitudes of people, and there is no one historical journey from this point. From here on it just spread, countless individuals and families took it with them to countless new places. Most people made it for its health benefits, some liked the taste, and some wanted to make money from it.
All of this modern history places the earliest documented use of kombucha in Russia. This is not under dispute, what does cause controversy is the question of the history of kombucha before Russia (and if kombucha even existed prior to being in Russia).
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| My kombucha SCOBY - like a jellyfish in a jar |
The Older History: Separating Evidence From Legend
Did Kombucha Really Come From China, Korea, or Japan?
The internet speaks of kombucha as originating in China, or Korea, or Japan, each of which are difficult to support with historical evidence.
A lot of kombucha websites particularly focus this claim on China, yet the reasoning behind this claim is lacking. It seems the claim that kombucha may have originated in China is made purely on the basis that tea was common in China, and this claim seems to ignore all evidence indicating this may not be the case.
Kombucha does not appear to have the same longstanding household tradition in China, Korea, or Japan that it has in Russia. Many Chinese people have never heard of kombucha, and the ones who have mostly see it as a new thing.
Although kombucha is often described online as originating in East Asia, clear historical evidence linking the modern drink to China, Korea, or Japan is difficult to identify.
The Korean Doctor Kombu Story Seems Unlikely
The internet speaks of the name kombucha as being the old name for this drink, which is improbable. It is far more likely that the name kombucha is a relatively new name that was made to sound mysterious and oriental.
There is a story that the word 'kombucha' was made by combining the name of a Korean doctor (called Kombu) with the word for tea (chai). Combining words like this for something new is imaginable, and without thinking about this further you could be excused for believing it is true, but in this case it does not appear to be where the name kombucha arose. While this is romantic, it is unlikely to be true for a number of reasons.
Many websites mention a Korean doctor with the surname of Kombu from the kingdom of Silla on the Korean Peninsula. It is said on many websites that he gave a curative tea drink to the Japanese Emperor Ingyō. While this is commonly mentioned on kombucha websites, historical documents seem to lack any reference to a doctor by this name. If this doctor did exist, he was not remarkable enough to be written about.
To add to this, Kombu does not appear to be a Korean surname, or if it is, it is a very rare surname.
While an unremarkable doctor with a unique name does not mean that he did not exist, it begins to cast a little doubt on the accuracy of the story.
The only reference I can find which makes any mention of this has the medic’s name as 'Kon Mu' (which is almost like kombu), unfortunately this may be a completely different person as this reference says nothing of him using any form of curative tea.
Combining the name for tea with the name of a doctor not mentioned in history with a unique surname do not rule out this story by itself. The most glaring issue with this story is why this common name would exist now.
If the name was made by combining the name of the doctor with the name for tea (which sounds reasonable enough) why would the name have then been changed when it entered Russia, kept as the new name for several generations (to the point that the old name had long been forgotten), and then upon entering new lands with several new languages be changed back to the now forgotten old name. This creates a historical problem that is difficult to explain.
Did Sugar Influence Where Kombucha Developed?
The basic idea is that kombucha probably first came about because someone left some tea out and the right combination of microbes colonised it. A lot of tea was in China, therefore people assume the chances of this happening in China were probably high. But there is one significant problem with this.
Kombucha needs sugar in order to ferment.
Tea was traditionally made without sugar in China and Japan. This adds evidence that kombucha probably did not spontaneously originate in China or Japan.
Tea in Russia was traditionally made with sugar (or with some other natural sweetener).
Kombucha is commonly consumed in Russia, there are various family traditions surrounding this.
Japan and China do not traditionally drink kombucha, traditionally they drink tea (without sugar), or they drink kelp tea with a name that sounds similar to 'kombucha'. This kelp tea superficially looks similar to чайный гриб, and also comes from the Mysterious East, this means kombucha may have gained the common name while being an entirely different beverage.
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| Kombucha - I brew a lot of it |
So, Where Did Kombucha Come From?
While we may never know exactly where kombucha first originated, the history we can trace is fascinating enough without adding myths. The earliest plausible and reliable records we have point to Russia and Siberia, where чайный гриб was kept as a household ferment and passed between generations before spreading across Europe and eventually the rest of the world.
Some of the popular stories about kombucha's origins are intriguing, but many are based more on assumptions, similar names, or modern retellings than on historical evidence. The real story is less mysterious, but perhaps more interesting: a simple fermented tea culture survived through ordinary households, was shared between families, and eventually became a global drink.
Kombucha's history is not a story of one famous inventor or a single moment of discovery. It is the story of countless people keeping a living culture alive, generation after generation.
