Feature

For some years now we have started our mornings with a strong cup of coffee, thrown money at our local Starbucks and invested in home cappuccino machines.  But coffee’s days could be numbered as Brits return to the good old cup of tea in their droves.

Drunk for centuries in China and Japan, tea is as much about ritual as it is about the thirst, in the East it may be a medicinal and ceremonial drink, in the West it is the cooling thirst quencher, the winter warmer, the nerve steadier and the social sup.  In Britain you won’t often cross a threshold without being offered a cuppa, be it a stinging mug of builders tea with a good heaped spoonful of sugar or a delicate Lapsang served in a china cup.  Meanwhile the tea break is an office ritual which is as much about bitching about the boss and gossiping about the latest office romance.

As popular as tea has been in Britain since the eighteenth century the recent coffee shop boom has seen us neglecting our traditional beverage in favour of a macchiato on the way to work, a mid morning Latte and an after dinner espresso.  But the humble cup of tea is making a comeback with a new, more fashionable face.  Not only are the likes of Kate Moss, Kylie and Madonna (of course) huge advocates of tea but the media have cottoned on to the health benefits of both green and black tea – from the fluoride found to keep your pearly whites as nature intended to the aiding of iron absorption and even the cancer busting properties of the good old tea leaf. 

Meanwhile new tea rooms are springing up on high streets, in hotels and in department stores and chucking out the chintzy reputation with sleek lines, fashionable clientele and a fabulous line in traditional and exotic teas…not to mention those to die for little cakes and biscuits that go hand in hand with any tea drinking session.  And if that isn’t proof enough for you that tea is the new champagne do yourself a favour and add the gorgeous Perfect Places For Afternoon Tea from the Tea Guild.

Even if you’re a dedicated coffee slurper there’s a tea for you, from the English Breakfast that we all know and love to the green tea well known for its health benefits, from monkey picked oolong to the unusual Maté of South America not to mention the flavoured teas and infusions which will have even the firmest of anti-brewites reaching for the kettle. Tea’s up.

for more information on the health benefits of tea and related events see the UK Tea Council’s website

www.tea.co.uk

by Laura Heaps, 16th January