There is a recent report out which suggests that the consumption of Tea in the USA will hit a new level this year and that last year the tea industry turned over around $6.2 billion. This is a fourfold increase on statistics from 10 years ago and the amount of tea houses/shops also replicates this trend. They have grown from 200 in the early 1990s to 2000 in 2005, with no sign of the trend slowing down.

The reasons are two fold, firstly that tea is seen as the more health conscious option when compared to coffee, and tea can be infused with other, more subtle flavours that coffee would not tolerate.

Tea in general, but Green Tea in particular, has been gaining a really positive press over the last few years, and although test results vary as to the degree of help that Green Tea gives to our general health, all reports agree it gives some help, and in the opinion of the general public, thats a good enough reason to drink it.

A surprising statistic is that nearly 127 million Americans say that Tea is now their favourite drink, but 80% of tea drunk in the USA is actually taken over ice.

As Green Tea gets the biggest press about giving the body antioxidants etc, you will not be surprised to know that it is derivatives of Green Tea that are the biggest movers and shakers in the drinks market.

Unlike the flavour of coffee, whose strong flavour only lets it blend with other strongly flavoured foods, tea will blend with many other foods and therefore there is a wide range of products now available to tickle the tea drinkers pallet.

Tea can be blended with almost any fruit you can think of. Commonly found flavours in tea include peach, blueberry, blackberry, hibiscus, lemon grass, pineapple and apricot. The choices are, it seems, endless. In the search for new ways to ingest Green Tea one speciality company has even developed Green Tea Ice Cream

This explosion of ideas of what to do with and how to present tea are answering the consumer markets requirements for things which are more health conscious and make us feel better about ourselves.

Tea seems to be giving many things to the market that its competitor, coffee, never has. Coffee is presented as a stimulant that keeps you going all day in the never ending rush of life. Green tea and all the others are depicted as the health giving, slower living alternative, and this is what the public is currently leaning towards.

With the marketing men developing ever more ways for us on how we should drink the brew it seems we should prepare ourselves for the explosion of ideas to continue over the next few years.

Mike Linder