Tea in the Present

Tea is the most popular beverage in the world with huge amounts of production coming out of the worlds most populated areas: China, India, and Japan. The US makes a little bit too but you wouldn’t stumble upon it unless you were looking. While many countries aren’t involved in tea production, tea consumption is huge — consider most of Europe including Britain don’t grow their own tea, they just import and drink a lot of it. From Canada to Japan, and going East around the world, tea is a big deal and has been for a very long time. It’s a big world with many different, and changing cultures. We’re on the cusp of an exciting shift in North America and Europe, the emergence of ‘quality’ and what that means for the tea world.

Popularity for various beverages is cyclical with periods of booms and busts “that’s what grandma’s drink” – someone talking about Sherry. The standard of living (for the most part) around the world is getting better and better, and with that shift, tea can diverge from the commodity market and enter into the specialty market where many coffees and alcohols exist today. You could argue high quality tea has been available for decades, that people just aren’t looking for it; and those that do have been buying it (all of that is true). My point is that tea is almost at the level where high quality can exist without looking for it. The stars are almost in alignment for the cycle of interest to start fresh, money to be in the right hands, and the desire to live a healthier, active lifestyle to kick it into a high gear.

Tea has hit our youth in a disguised form, first with bubble tea and then with well marketed, catchy named flavored teas (such as Magic Potion), and as that exposed audience gets older, perhaps there will be a point where drinking ‘mango bonanza’ is seen as too childish and the consumption of more ‘mature tea’ begins (though I am still a fan of bubblegum/cotton candy ice cream, so I’ll dispute my own point here).

When ‘Boba’ (this is a new term for me, I’ve only noticed people calling it that in recent years) aka Bubble Tea was first introduced, it was super popular, but didn’t really have anything to do with tea in the cases I witnessed. Perhaps tea was used instead of water, but the experience overall was mostly about whether you wanted watermelon or kiwi with the tapioca pearls, who cared about the tea? Nobody.

That’s changing — If you went for boba now you’d notice there’s more of a focus of region specific teas and their styles. Thai style milk tea, Hong Kong style, Da Hong Pao Oolong milk tea, etc. When I attended the World Tea Expo in 2016 there was a lecture I sat in from the man who brought the idea of bubble tea to North America from Taiwan so many years ago. In that lecture he mentioned that he has been playing the long game and fully expects that ‘proper tea’ will catch on eventually when boba fades away. Drawing a comparison to what has happened in the coffee world, I’d say he’s probably right. Coffee’s transformation over the years is a good proof of concept.

With awareness comes connoisseurs, and with connoisseurs quality, and with quality money, and with money — higher quality. We’re at the brink of this, and its my goal to play my role to get it there.