British Tea Trends

A meeting of the UN’s Intergovernmental Group on Tea in Sri Lanka saw the release of some fascinating figures about the UK tea market and British tea trends.

In 2015, Black tea accounted for just under 70% of the total tea sales in the UK followed by Fruit and Herbal, Green, Speciality and other teas.

The report revealed that in the last six years tea consumption has dropped by more than 20%. The report states, this drop is “completely attributable to the diminishing sales of ordinary tea bags, which dominate the market.”.  On the other hand, it also comments that there is ever increasing interest in more sophisticated teas and infusions.

This should be no great surprise to our discerning tea drinking friends.  The Tea House doesn’t deal in “ordinary tea bags”. We do have quite the selection of all the speciality black, green, herbal tea and fruit blends you could desire.

 Perhaps he had never tasted Chai?

Findings also revealed a scandalous statistic that, in a survey by Statista, 14% of people don’t drink tea at all!  Interestingly, 34% of black tea drinking Brits go for ‘milk no sugar’, by the way. In George Orwell’s essay ‘A Nice Cup of Tea’ he wrote: “How can you call yourself a true tea-lover if you destroy the flavour of your tea by putting sugar in it?” Despite his sojourn in India, perhaps he had never tasted Chai?

The report concludes that the future of tea in the UK is both positive and bleak! Millennial tea drinkers are exploring more novel variants of green, herbal and fruit blends while black tea – ‘the cultural mainstay of the UK’ – is losing its share.

Do you break the mould of these British tea trends? Or are you as traditional as they come?

If you are, try one of our British Blends here!

Source: http://www.fao.org/economic/est/est-commodities/tea/tea-meetings/intersessionaltea2017/en/

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