These days, a coffee shop on every corner is the rule, not the exception. Here in San Francisco, I’m within spitting distance of a Peet’s, a Starbuck’s—make that three—and a smattering of other local caffeinating holes. But in the past few years, there’s also been a shift toward another type of beverage hot spot—tea shops.
It’s not just in the Bay Area; on my last trip to Seattle, I noticed at least two in a weekend, and friends in Portland, Chicago, and NYC are all familiar, if not well accustomed to, tea shops, lounges, gardens, and bars amidst the beans. Similarly, the variety and presence of tea on our grocery shelves seems to be increasing without abatement. But has tea really caught on as much as coffee, soda, and beer?
Brewin’ Up a Storm
America has long been low on the tea-drinking totem pole. While places like India, China, and the UK share a rich history with tea, ours is more recent and less imbued with culture and tradition.
And although we certainly haven’t adopted the traditional ceremonies or slow, loose-leaf brewing techniques that characterize authentic tea making, we have begun a shift toward it. Two American tea inventions—the tea bag and iced tea—have helped create a totally American style of tea drinking—fast and sweet. Eighty-five percent of tea drunk in America is iced, according to the Tea Association of the USA, and the rise of ready-to-drink beverages and sugary bottles of brew common in quickie marts and convenience stores has greatly upped our consumption.
Always looking for health-conscious choices, Americans have also latched onto the antioxidant benefits of tea—green tea in particular—catapulting it into the mainstream. Now we have green tea everything—cocktails, chocolate, ice cream, and body creams.
But the rise of tea shops represents a shift to the more traditional type of tea consumption—loose leaf, hot, and slowed down. While the foundation for these establishments couldn’t have happened without our taste buds tweaked toward specialty foods and the benefit of being able to drink our antioxidants, the new type of tea drinking is different. At the Numi Tea Garden in Oakland, for instance, there are more than forty different teas on the menu. At the Samovar lounges in San Francisco, you can choose from Russian, English, Japanese, and Chinese Tea services, and at specialty shops, like Cooks Shop Here in Massachusetts, purveyors shop the globe looking for the most exotic and high-quality loose leaf teas to offer to their consumers.
All-My-Tea
This is good news for tea lovers, who previously had to travel abroad to taste authentic brews. Outside the U.S., tea is sometimes hard to avoid. After water, tea is the most widely consumed beverage worldwide. Its use dates back before written history and its long standing prevalence among varied cultures is evident in its linguistic roots—no matter where you are in the world, the beverage will be referred to as either a variation on te (the, tea, teh) or a variation of cha (chai, chiya, sha).
All true tea comes from the same plant, the Camellia sinensis. Differences among tea result from terroir, or “taste” of the land on which it was grown, place of origin, and processing, including length of oxidation.
What we call herbal “tea” really isn’t—only brews made from the leaves of this c.sinensis, which contain caffeine, are true teas. Herbal infusions are made from seeds, barks, leaves, and flowers of plants and are without caffeine.
