Interesting question! I am far from an expert on tea husbandry/horticulture, however, there are experts in this field! Purdue's Argiculture department has a division dedicated to horticulture and there is a course dedicated to the history of horticulture, in which they dedicate an entire lecture to tea, colonialism, and the interconnection of the two in ending the longest standing empire (the various Chinese dynasties employing very similar government structures) with modern states (the Chinese Republic followed by today's communist party). Much of what I'll say below is drawn from that resource. In a very real sense, the European drive to colonize China and the ways in which it utilized foreign territories to produce goods (India, Indonesia, etc.) was in no small part driven by the incredibly large position tea occupied in European society and business at that time.

From that resource, I believe it is fair to say that the way we enjoy teas today, often as "adulterated" blends, is quite different from how the Chinese enjoyed their tea more than 2 centuries ago. While the Chinese had blends, from what I gather in that resource they were much more conservative with the blending (as they were with many things at that time). On page 9 that resource goes into explicit detail about what exactly constituted tea, and that some of today's most popular blends like Earl Grey were a solution to the impossible to satisfy demand from Europeans and would have been considered by Chinese authorities at the time inferior or adulterated. Because there was only so much tea to be distributed among European traders as all trade in CHina at that time moved through the Canton System and quantities were determined by the emperor, ways of leavening or diluting the tea content by adulteration became much more prominent as economic incentive grew, first by the Chinese looking to meet European quotas, and then by Europeans looking to either make up for shortfalls between production and demand (even after this dilution by Chinese growers) or just looking to expand their profit by spreading the product out. There were even cottage industries around false teas in Europe made of such delicious things as dried sheep scat and elderberry leaves, not as a reflection of what people liked, but because people in Europe had an inexhaustible demand for the stuff and, because production was so far removed from the consumer, those less acquainted with it apparently had a hard time finding unadulterated products. For a slight tangent but fascinating read about the clash of a modern and ancient culture, see the letter sent by the Qianlong Emperor to George III's request for direct access to Chinese manufacturers, in no small part motivated by the desire for more tea.

There is also the question of the tea ceremony: how the tea is prepared and consumed, not just the tea itself. In this regard, tea today (at least as North Americans and Europeans) is different from how the Chinese and those in their cultural sphere enjoyed tea. When you view "teacup" under google images, you'll see a thin porcelain cup with a fragile handle. While we imagine porcelain as a uniqely Chinese export, so much so we call that style of dinnerware "china", and porcelain definitely was an exclusively Chinese product until the advent of Meissen porcelain and the release of Chinese trade secrets by a Jesuit priest in the early 18th century, that style of teacup with a handle is distinctly European. Chinese and Japanese cups were handle-less, as the tea was served after being cooled to specific temperatures and the drinker was supposed to be able to handle the cup easily. The Chinese and neighbors in their cultural sphere (Japan, Korea) prepared their tea in kettles, meaning the vessel that boiled the water was also the serving vessel. There were no ceramics makers in Europe at that time (pre-18th century) advanced enough to produce vessels that could withstand that kind of direct heating temperature without cracking, so they generally prepared their water in a tea kettle made of metal and then transferred the heated water after it had cooled somewhat into a ceramic or sometimes decorated metal tea pot.

With regards to the question of "Red Rose Tea" as an importer and handler for teas, that has very much been how Europeans engaged with tea since the 16th century. In fact, some of todays most famous producers such as Twinnings are explicitly discussed in that second link.

Some interesting tidbits I was not aware of (and which I assume to be true from Purdue's reputation): I associate certain teas very strongly with India: chai, masala chai, and Darjeeling (named after the region), and they are the second largest consumer/producer of tea in the world. However, from that second link, while India's tea culture is not exclusively a legacy of British colonialism as there are recordings of Indians drinking tea prior to the Empire, the pervasive scale of today's tea culture in India is. Prior to British colonialism, tea was not widely available to the lower class and most of it was imported from China, chai itself being the Hindi loan word of the Chinese cha (cf. also Japan's お茶, an etymological origin I can speak to more). The British began industrial/large scale cultivation of tea in India, initially using smuggled tea seeds and Chinese laborers, as a way of meeting endless demand. Today India is the second largest producer and consumer of tea in the world but that would not have been what European traders would have seen 2 centuries ago.