Steeped in Tea

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Thus the nation was born with a patriotic taste for tea's more caffeinated cousin. All across the young republic, coffeehouses opened as depots for political and philosophical discussion, becoming instrumental in the development of America's java-fueled urban work ethic. Nevertheless, tea remained entrenched in the national psyche. Some of the first American millionaires, T.H. Perkins, Stephen Gerard, and John Jacob Astor, all made fortunes trading tea with China, as clipper ships and railroads in the 1850s carried fresh tea to the New World and sold it through retailers like the Great Atlantic and Pacific Tea Company (A&P)-the nation's first supermarket chain. At the peak of consumption, in 1897, Americans each drank 1.56 pounds of it annually. (They now drink about half a pound each.)

Two innovations in the early 1900s revolutionized how Americans consume tea. Scrambling to attract attention in the summer heat at the 1904 World's Fair in St. Louis, exhibitors of Indian black tea poured hot brewed tea into glasses jammed with ice. The crowds came, popularizing a refreshing new beverage-iced tea-that Southerners already considered a major food group and that now accounts for around 80 percent of the way Americans drink tea. Four years later, New York tea importer Thomas Sullivan hand-sewed silk pouches to package samples of tea leaves for his customers. Enamored with the convenience of the bags, customers demanded that their product be delivered in them, too, and Sullivan replaced the silk with more economical gauze to create tea bags. Petroleum-based nylon mesh eventually became the standard, which some specialty companies are now flouting in favor of biodegradable material.

Up until World War II, Americans cherished green, oolong, and black teas. Home deliverers like the Jewel Tea Company routed tea across rural America. But Japan's invasion of China in 1937 abruptly cut off the country's lifeline to East Asian tea gardens and shifted American consumption almost exclusively to Indian black tea. (It would be 1978 before China reentered the U.S. market, and only recently have Americans appreciated green tea again.) Meanwhile, the Korean War forced producers to look to new, more stable sources of tea; Argentina emerged as one of the top suppliers to the United States. (The idyllic Argentine pampas grasslands will never find their way onto a box of specialty tea, however; most of the low-quality leaves grown there are still used for iced tea or for multiple-source, mass market black tea blends.) At three dollars for 100 bags, tea became a supermarket 'loss leader'-a product sold below cost. For consumers, it lost luster.

A 1983 New York Times editorial, 'Tea Snobs and Coffee Bigots,' summed up the degraded perception-and popular associations-of tea at the time. Responding to a letter from a Portland woman who complained about 'New York's lack of civility concerning the serving of tea,' the editors opined that 'Coffee Bigots . . . think it is somehow un-American or unmanly or troublemaking to drink tea-and scorn those who do as Tea Snobs. This bigotry, fortunately, seems to be diminishing as more and more drinkers of decaffeinated coffee also speak up for their special taste.'

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