Convenience of Tea Bags Keeps Britain’s Top Brew Bubbling Over in Popularity

Britain has adopted the American hamburger, Indian curries, the Greek kebab and all types of Chinese cuisine. But thanks mainly to a soggy fold of paper, it shows no sign of replacing its beloved tea.

Tea drinking, as entrenched in the nation’s history as its former empire, might have succumbed to market rival coffee, industry experts say.

But the easy and cheap tea bag has fought off that challenge to ensure that the leafy brew remains Britain’s No. 1 drink.

No Brown Residue

Since the 1950s when the first tea bags were introduced to Britain, most households have abandoned the centuries-old ritual of preparing their beloved “cuppa”--pouring boiling water over tea leaves in a pot.

They have converted to the American method of using paper squares stuffed with leaves because they do not leave a sloshy brown residue at the bottom of the pot, which has to be disposed every time a brew is made.

“The tea bag has sustained tea,” said Illtyd Lewis, executive director of Britain’s Tea Council. “The tea bag’s advent was a counterploy to the instant coffee explosion.”

He said that while tea bag use has grown over the last two years, consumption of instant coffee has been static.

Twice as Popular

Tea is more than twice as popular as alcohol and coffee, accounting for more than 45% of beverage consumption in Britain, according to the Council, an independent initiative of major producers and the British tea trade.

Britain, which imports 25% of the world’s tea, uses nearly 3 billion gallons of water a year to brew the drink, the Council said in its latest annual report.

And nearly 73% of the estimated 196 million cups of tea swallowed daily in Britain are now made with tea bags.

Many purists--Queen Elizabeth is among them, according to a Buckingham Palace spokeswoman--prefer loose-leaf tea. But most Britons apparently believe that the bagged variety tastes the same as the traditional brew.

‘A Wonderful Convenience’

Lewis said growth in tea bag consumption--seen mainly over the last 15 years--has not peaked as predicted and rose 2% last year alone.

R. Twining and Co., which has been selling tea since 1706 when drinking the brew began to take off in Britain, sees handiness as the main appeal of tea bags.

“Tea bags are a wonderful convenience,” said corporate relations director Samuel Twining.

The Tea Council says that in addition to saving time, tea bags are more economical, yielding up to 50% more cups than the equivalent amount of loose tea.

Exotic Blends

Leading sellers such as Twining and Jacksons of Piccadilly have also won over many gourmet tea drinkers by packaging high-quality and exotic aromatic blends in bags.

“A few years ago the emphasis in the specialty end of the market was on loose-leaf tea,” said a spokesman for Jacksons, which now sells about half of its tea in bags. “But we’re convinced tea bags can produce just as good a cup.”

Tea is probably even more a part of daily life than in the 1700s, when Britain wrested control of the tea trade and London tea houses sprang up, and in the 1800s when tea breaks began for working people.

Plenty of Uses

Tea is drunk to soothe jangled nerves, warm cool hands in damp weather, wash down all meals and aid digestion. There are tea dances, tea gardens, tea dresses, tea parties, nursery teas, power teas, high teas, low teas, morning teas, office tea trolleys.

Cricket matches break for tea. For many foreign tourists, a trip to Britain is not complete without a ritual late afternoon “high” tea accompanied by sandwiches, cakes, cream and jams.