The global tea market is poised to grow by upward of $13 billion from 2020 to 2024, according to Business Wire. While the coronavirus has been a blight on many businesses and industries, a recent report from industry analyst TechNavio said it has been the driver in increased demand for tea, which has seen market growth of 4.32% in 2020. The “functional benefits of tea is a major trend driving the growth of the market,” Technavio reported.
As a proud American, I have always preferred coffee to tea. It smells better, and it tastes better, too. An average cup of joe also contains more caffeine (about 95 milligrams) than an average cup of black or green tea (anywhere from 47-90 mg and 20-45 mg, respectively). Tea does have “functional benefits,” it’s true, but so does a shovel or broccoli — more of a tool than a pleasure. No, in all the places where it counts, coffee comes out ahead.
I’d never say that preferring tea to coffee is un-American, but preferring coffee to tea is definitely more American. There is a reason, after all, that our most famous tea party involved destruction rather than consumption. Indeed, the United States’s coffee culture dates back to the beginning.
In 1767, in order to pay for the tyrant King George’s debts incurred in the French and Indian War, the British Parliament passed the Townshend Acts. Named after Charles Townshend, the British chancellor of the exchequer, these acts were a series of duties imposed on goods imported to the colonies, namely British china, glass, lead, paint, paper, and, of course, tea. These items were chosen to be taxed for their common usage and because Townshend believed the colonists would be unable to produce them independently in a cost-effective manner. He estimated that most of the revenue would come from tea alone.
Naturally, these taxes were an outrage, made only worse by the thrice-damned Tea Act passed in May 1773. This act wasn’t as much a tax as it was a bailout — it granted the financially sinking British East India Company a monopoly on tea sales to the colonies. This not only hurt colonial merchants but also worked as a way to bind colonists into paying the previously enacted duties on tea.
As an act of soft rebellion, colonists began renouncing tea-drinking altogether, and on December 16, 1773, Samuel Adams and the Sons of Liberty took that protest a step further by dumping 342 chests of tea into the Boston harbor. The popularity of coffee in the colonies soared, even replacing beer as the go-to morning beverage. As John Adams wrote to his wife, Abigail, in 1774 regarding his switch to coffee, “Accordingly, I have drank Coffee every Afternoon since, and have borne it very well. Tea must be universally renounced.”
