AHC: Tea More Popular in the West than Coffee

Delta Force

Banned
Tea is primarily an Eastern and English drink, with coffee being more popular in France, Italy, the Netherlands, and North America, and areas influenced by the Ottomans. How could tea have become more popular than coffee in the West, with tea houses overtaking cafes as the place for Europeans to meet, and multinational tea chains having a tea house on every street?
 

SunDeep

Banned
Tea is primarily an Eastern and English drink, with coffee being more popular in France, Italy, the Netherlands, and North America, and areas influenced by the Ottomans. How could tea have become more popular than coffee in the West, with tea houses overtaking cafes as the place for Europeans to meet, and multinational tea chains having a tea house on every street?

Avoid the Tea Act in 1773, and the Boston Tea Party, and tea will remain more popular in the USA than coffee, and by extension across the rest of the Americas. Of course, it'll have far greater repercussions than just maintaining tea's greater popularity in the West...
 
Tea is primarily an Eastern and English drink, with coffee being more popular in France, Italy, the Netherlands, and North America, and areas influenced by the Ottomans. How could tea have become more popular than coffee in the West, with tea houses overtaking cafes as the place for Europeans to meet, and multinational tea chains having a tea house on every street?

It's more of a East Asian and North Indian thing than just "Eastern". South India and SE Asia tend to lean more toward coffee.
 
These stereotypes are getting dated fast.

The Turks are famous for coffee but drink mostly tea. The Brits are famous for their tea culture but I'm sure they drink more coffee now. In Europe the French have the best tea. The Russians still drink more tea than coffee I think, but coffee culture is booming in China. It's possible tea is consumed more as an iced beverage now than a hot one.

It seems coffee is more suitable to our fast paced and stressed out modern life. Tea culture still has cache as a way of passing time in leisure, one that's more of a break in routine rather than a part of our daily habit.
 
In Europe the French have the best tea.

The French sell horrible tea, so do most countries in Europe (German tea is the worst) although the Dutch do some quite nice varieties. This is coming from extensive traveling (and tea drinking) around Europe.
 
at a glance on comsumption lists, both Ireland and UK, traditionally two of the places with highest tea comsumption, is (barely) drinking more coffee than tea, while turkey aren't even on the lists of coffee comsumption due to lack of data, but given that they're first in tea drinking by a long shot ...

Furthermore, its somewhat an apples vs oranges question given that with you need different ammounts of tea and coffee to make a good cup, and even within those two classifications the difference is so big that it might well be impossible to make a good average.

Interesting though is the fact that the average Finn (from cradle to grave) is drinking 5.7 cups of coffee each day.

That said i know for a fact that i'm pushing up (as much as any single person can) tea comcumption in my country ... drinking some 2.5-3kg a year (conservative guesstimate)
 
It may come as a shock to you but in the early 1700s England was more of a coffee culture thanks to the EIC.
It was only due to a coffee shortage that we turned to tea
 
These stereotypes are getting dated fast.

The Turks are famous for coffee but drink mostly tea. The Brits are famous for their tea culture but I'm sure they drink more coffee now. In Europe the French have the best tea. The Russians still drink more tea than coffee I think, but coffee culture is booming in China. It's possible tea is consumed more as an iced beverage now than a hot one.

While it's true that "All Brits drink tea" etc. is a complete stereotype, I can tell you from experience that the French do not have 'the best tea'. Not even close. In fact, if there is one country that manages to mess up both coffee and tea... it's France. :rolleyes:

It seems coffee is more suitable to our fast paced and stressed out modern life. Tea culture still has cache as a way of passing time in leisure, one that's more of a break in routine rather than a part of our daily habit.

This is a stereotype in itself, of course. :p
 
Tea is popular in America south of the Mason Dixon line.
Might might have become more popular in the old south if Coffee was seen as a Yankee drink.
 
Sweet tea is in the blood of most Southerners. That being said, sweet tea is to drink while relaxing or eating. Coffee is to drink when needing energy to keep going.
 

SunDeep

Banned
Sweet tea is in the blood of most Southerners. That being said, sweet tea is to drink while relaxing or eating. Coffee is to drink when needing energy to keep going.

Also worth mentioning, there are several different types of tea. If you count cocaine leaf tea, then you could even argue that OTL qualifies, due to the fact that they still use a cocaine-free coca leaf extract as a key ingredient of Coca-Cola- essentially, Coca Cola is carbonated, sweetened coca-leaf iced tea.
 
Hell, British coffee houses were a big deal in the 17th century.

I can't find the source, but I seem to recall reading an article talking about how Ceylon (Sri Lanka) was largely a coffee-growing colony until a coffee blight wiped out the crop and was replaced by tea. That led to a major coffee shortage but a huge tea surplus.
 
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