Is specialty tea having a moment?

First published in TChing in two parts, here and here.


This theme comes up so often that I had to check if I've written about it here.  Nope; I wrote a blog post about tea popularity and tea cults some months back, and only drifted into it a little there.

This article from that time frame claims that "Artisanal Tea in America Is Having a Moment," which I think has been addressed here at TChing by different authors across varying scope.  This more recent article claims that "There is No Craft Tea Movement in America (Yet)."  So which is it?

It's possible that both could be right, seen from two different points of view.  My input in that blog post was that it's not the case (no "moment"), but from within a narrow interest group, related to increasing exposure among a small set of people, awareness and demand is ramping up.  Probably some vendors are experiencing good sales growth, and new sources certainly keep entering the market.  I write about new developments and options all the time in my blog, and people read that (Tea in the Ancient World).

compressed black tea from Laos; new forms keep turning up

There won't be space here to break apart both sets of claims, to fully place all that.  It would work to only consider the "why not" side, from the second article cited:


...Walk into your local grocery store, and you can choose among Fair Trade Certified, single-origin beans from Ethiopia, Costa Rica or Peru. Now in its third or fourth wave, depending on whom you ask, craft coffee culture is everywhere.

Whither craft tea? While many Americans do indeed brew and drink tea, it has yet to experience a 21st century “craft” revolution, the kind that launches national chains and inspires financial analysts to rant about millennials’ spending habits...


So there's the difference; at the local specialty grocery store level tea is very likely to be under-represented, while coffee isn't.  That's probably accurate.  To cite a related example, the main national tea outlet chain, Teavana, owned by Starbucks, was closed about two years ago.  More recently Unilever has been reported as considering getting out of the tea industry (owner of Lipton, PG Tips, Tazo, and the T2 chain), although they did just officially deny other related reporting two months ago, so who knows.

Where I live, in Bangkok, the limitations in demand and awareness stands out more than development of that range does, but there are a few specialty cafes that serve as exceptions.

bubble tea and elaborate pour-over flavored tea versions are more popular in Bangkok

That article cites awareness as the main issue, along with prepared tea not being as well-suited for fast production and distribution, or as high in caffeine level.  The awareness part seems right; even among tea interest groups on Facebook some people explore broadly and deeply related to tea types and culture (as in the Gong Fu Cha group), and others emphasize focus on flavored blends or tea-bag version consumption (as in the Tea Drinkers group).  I comment in both, and also helped co-found an even larger themed group there, International Tea Talk, so that continuum is familiar.  Artisianal or craft tea demand (or specialty tea, how I tend to phrase that), probably isn't as common as interest in blends and flavored tea.

I founded a Quora Space about tea too, answering questions (here)

From the perspective of a tea enthusiast maybe more people should learn about and appreciate better tea, because it is a diverse, pleasant, healthy, and exceptional value beverage choice.  Or maybe they shouldn't, according to some; for rarer tea types only so much is produced (or had been made in the past, related to aged teas), and increasing demand may increase pricing levels.  I tend to also support producer interests, and think that expanded production could accommodate higher demand, so I don't worry about that part.  General interest and demand ramps up so slowly that it's largely a non-issue anyway.


I'll keep supporting tea awareness, and it seems likely that at some point it will "take off," and seem more like a movement.

On tea popularity and tea cults

An article recently raised these themes, with the "cult" idea already reoccuring once in awhile.  I'll start with the broader context and then move on to more about the cult issue.

That article included an interesting summary of where the interest in the subject stands now (here).  The title gives away some of his main concerns, "Artisanal Tea in America Is Having a Moment."  It's really not.  For the last decade people have continually said that artisanal / specialty / "better" tea is about to become the next big thing, and that hasn't happened, and it's probably not about to happen now.  As someone put it in a comment in his post, the author was the one having a moment.  All fair enough.

From there people might take issue with specific points made, with too many references to commercial interests (vendors), or to other parts of the perspective there.  In general I see a problem with the more exotic aspects of tea making headlines (most typically in news web pages versus newspapers), tied to duck shit (ya shi) dan cong oolong, or about obscure aged tea versions that you need to visit a tea master in an isolated basement shop to even try.  By appointment, maybe, screened with more care than your local drug dealer puts into keeping a low profile.

All that last part is actually a reference to one person in particular, with plenty of others coming to mind that it also fits.  Forbes mentioned that 'Duck Shit' Tea Is Taking the World by Storm, in 2015, but I was thinking more along the lines of LA Times mentioning Tea Habitat in 2009 and 2016, which also relates to that Dan Cong oolong theme.  Tea really doesn't need to be any more exotic or difficult to source and prepare than coffee; that can get lost in the hype over how some versions are really unique and unusual.

The article seemed fine to me, not based on a mature or balanced perspective of current tea culture or tea itself, but that is what it is.  This describes why the author thinks tea is having a moment:


TEA IS THE PERFECT CULTURAL DRINK FOR RIGHT NOW. It has such a big tent -- you can like it for the caffeine kick, or the rituals, or the scientific experiments in brewing time and temperature, or the cool hobbyist gear, or the Eastern religious undertones, or the dietary benefits, or matcha's Instagram friendly coloring. You can like it because it separates you out, or pulls you into a new community, because it makes you feel simultaneously like an outsider and an insider. 

Right now tea is exciting because tea feels fresh and new, which is ironic considering it is the oldest drink in the world. We're still in those early adopter stages, the energy and optimism and the hobbyist nature, but it's professionalizing slowly... 


That's the thing, we were in the early adopter stages 15 years ago, back when online tea groups, blogs and reference pages, public meet-ups, source options, and the rest started ramping up.  Most of the early versions of all that have ran their course, often replaced twice by other similar references, sites, vendor outlets, and groups since.  This reference explains what I mean: Cha Dao:  A Journal of Tea and Culture summarized input from various authors from 2005 to 2011, much more active for the first three years.

Bubble tea has had a moment in that longer time period, and Starbucks tried to make mall shops work and failed, in the case of Teavana.  Better tea is ramping up slowly but it's definitely not having a moment.

a Moychay tea club in Moscow, maybe tea is having a moment there

Onto the point I did want to address instead, in this section:


...As we drank the teas from small, handcrafted clay tea cups made by an Albuquerque artist, the Tea Heads talked their shit. They talked about the intense battles fought in the Reddit subreddit/tea. They talked about Steve Odell, an influential Portland, Oregon tea house owner who created a large, cultish following with his sober basement parties. And "Po" Rosenberg, another Portland tea master who guides folks through "tea tastings" at his Heavens Tea shop, sometimes letting them try 50 year old teas... 

There's that tea master offering ultra-rare teas theme, just still not the one I was thinking of, which also wasn't Imen. Technically this doesn't say that any tea following resembles a cult; it says that one following is "cultish."  Let's start with definitions and my own take on cults and get back to that. 


As to the mention of "intense battles fought in the tea subreddit," that's a joke.  People post pictures of brewing tea there, or cupboards full of tea-bag boxes of teas.  Once in awhile snarky responses blame them for not really drinking good tea, or for thinking that their tea is better than others' when they actually do.  There are no battles, hardly even any decent discussions.


To be clear on context I am active on that subreddit, posting or commenting there about every other day, but it's just not where tea is really discussed, people only post there.  Discussion works out better on Facebook groups, at least for now.  Like in this Gong Fu Cha group, the Puerh Tea Club related to that type, the International Tea Talk group I admin for, or in the Tea Drinkers group, more oriented towards people newer to tea, where this discussion took place.


Little glitches in that article, like that one, probably put off plenty of tea enthusiasts, but in general it's not a problem for me to read past them.  The author just passed on what he was told, and a majority of the references described real tea themes, just in light of such perspective biases.

What is a cult?

Google's take will work for a dictionary definition starting point:


1. a system of religious veneration and devotion directed toward a particular figure or object.  "the cult of St. Olaf"

2. a relatively small group of people having religious beliefs or practices regarded by others as strange or sinister.  "a network of Satan-worshiping cults"

3. a misplaced or excessive admiration for a particular person or thing.  "a cult of personality surrounding the leaders"


All so negative!  There must be a more positive form of cult to balance all that.  I think the definition of "cultish" might lead back towards that:


1.  relating to or characteristic of a small group of people having religious beliefs regarded by others as strange or as imposing excessive control over members.  "weird cultish beliefs"

2.relating to a person or thing that is popular or fashionable among a particular group or section of society.


That last definition captures what I'm after; the negative value judgment isn't essential to the concept.  Even in "cult," as I see the concept range, but related to "cultish" Google's definition agrees.

The Wikipedia definition is the same:


In modern English, the term cult has usually been used in reference to a social group that is defined by its unusual religious, spiritual, or philosophical beliefs, or by its common interest in a particular personality, object or goal. This sense of the term is controversial and it has divergent definitions both in popular culture and academia and it has also been an ongoing source of contention among scholars across several fields of study.[1][2] It is usually considered pejorative...


I'm probably interpreting the concept more broadly than most in wanting it to also have positive range, which raises a very problematic "private language" concern.  Word meanings that aren't shared are meaningless.

I'll skip ahead to an example; Crossfit could be considered cultish (although per the Google dictionary definition here not as a cult).

A close friend was into working out in a similar capacity--just not actually doing Crossfit--and at one point he posted about his workout routine daily.  Dedication to that pursuit took over his life, most of his daily social connections related to that, and most of his life's meaning was tied up in becoming very, very fit.  I don't necessarily see that as a problem.  It's shared obsessive behavior, for sure, but on a couple of different levels it is very healthy.

Another example:  in the late 70's when I was growing up in Western Pennsylvania fandom for the Steelers football team took on cult-like aspects.  People painted their houses and cars black and gold, wore the related clothing regularly, regarded the players as more important than typical celebrity status, and planned their lives around following the games.  It became one of the more important parts of a lot of people's reality.  Was it too much?  That seems like a judgment call.  That degree of frenzy was temporary, based on several years of unusual success, and it was harmless enough.

Tea as a cult

Tea can't be seen as a cult in relation to those Google and Wikipedia definitions.  There's not enough religious tie-in, and bias towards mind-control and other negative aims.  It's just a beverage choice, although it can relate to subculture.  A tea circle could be "cultish;" it could "relate to a person or thing that is popular or fashionable among a particular group or section of society."

The closest it seems to get is in the example of the Global Tea Hut.  That is a Zen-based group led by a single individual (Wu De, formerly Aaron Fisher), that puts emphasis on shared subject interest and perspective, and ceremonial aspects, based out of a central location, with some degree of financial interest.

Wu De (photo credit the Global Tea Hut Youtube channel)

This web page lists their subscription packages, and this Go Fund Me account shows them to be $156,000 towards meeting their million dollar goal to build a new retreat center.  Commercial enough.  The first link also leads to past issues of their monthly magazine on tea background, a great reference.

An online friend wrote a nice, neutral-tone article about visiting there for a lifestyle and travel blog.  It's probably as well to move on here rather than to try and force my own interpretation of to what degree this is or isn't a cult.  It doesn't matter.

Again, I don't necessarily see that "cult" concept as needing to be negative, as I think of it, so the discussion doesn't clearly mean any one thing.  If you strip away the negative connotation and leave the rest, about shared interest and perspective, underlying common philosophical themes, and so on, what concept remains?  Interest group?  They're definitely an interest group then.  Their goals and overlap with being a cult are perhaps best identified by the first paragraphs of their Go Fund Me proposal:


Imagine arriving at a retreat center to find you feel instantly at home. The smiles of all your new friends from around the world welcome you. Imagine the first bowl of tea, and how it warms and refreshes you after a long journey. You start letting go of the vicissitudes of daily life and the quiet rhythm of this amazing place takes over. Along with insights and wisdom, you find a stillness in yourself you didn’t even know was there.

You stay here for ten days — meditating; eating nourishing, healthy food; connecting with wonderful humans from around the world; wandering the gardens; learning and practicing tea brewing; and drinking lots and lots of the finest organic teas on earth.

And it’s all free. When you leave, you pass by the donation box and quietly leave an offering from your full heart and send a good thought to the future people that will be nourished here, as you have...


Sounds great; no concerns there.

That original article never unpacks why a tea circle was interpreted as "cultish."

That idea was passed on by the people discussing it in the article, and may well have been the author's interpretation, versus something they actually said.  If either of those circles of friends shared a strong interest in tea (as many people really do; an obsession even), a general perspective on life, a take on ethics, and maybe even aesthetic sensibilities (taste in clothing) then that would seem to fit.  Religious interest, personality-centering, negative goals, and mind control wouldn't need to apply.

Actual tea culture

Another criticism was that real tea culture wasn't fleshed out in the article, which I completely agree with.  The individual fragments of "what tea is" kind of worked towards that, but in some of those cases people were forwarding their own agendas instead of sharing perspective.  Or the two were the same thing.

There's no way I can do justice to what tea culture is here, and I'm probably not the right person for the job anyway.  I drink tea alone, almost all the time.  I have tea friends but not many living locally, so the idea of a culture base seems to not imply.  Still I should say a little.  I've been active in discussing tea online for quite awhile, and have met lots of people related to tea over the last two years, so some perspectives and generalities definitely apply.

Which perspectives should I describe though?  That article spends a few sentences on individual people and cases; that's as far as a review would typically go.  The snap-shots and limited reference frameworks would need to knit together into a continuum of what tea culture is, or could be, which would always leave out more than it actually includes, and lack depth for boiling perspectives down to a couple of sentences.  Groups would gain importance, as if one person obsessed with tea, working back through older cultural influences and new experiences, wouldn't be as important as any given dozen associated people doing the same things.  Hundreds of those somewhat isolated, partially networked-in tea enthusiasts are as much the story of modern tea culture as anything else.

Groups like the Global Tea Hut and Tea Masters (mentioned in the article; it's a long story what that is) do promote relatively universal background information along with their own perspective.  Facebook tea groups are exactly what you'd expect, diverse in nature.  There it's interesting how vendor specific tea groups can also serve as a way to share common perspective (like this Yunnan Sourcing version).  Other online tea groups come and go, as references do; the Tea Chat forum more or less morphed into Tea Forum.

Online discussions don't do an experiential subject like tea justice.  People gathering in person to share the experience really is a much more complete, and therefore valid, expression of tea culture.

In an initial comment on that article post I mentioned how furthering tea awareness is a common goal that such articles promote, maybe even more effectively than tea blogs, like this one.  The reason for why people want to promote tea interest may not be clear.  For vendors it is; increasing income.  Beyond that, and beyond sharing an experience enthusiasts themselves value, there is desire to promote tea consumption to help producers.  That subject gets covered here to such length I'll not add to it in this.


All of this reminds me of guessing that other interests I've pursued were surely the next big thing.  I was amazed by the intensity of the experience when I took up rock climbing, and thought for sure that would catch on.  It's clear enough why it didn't, and never will:  it's difficult, dangerous, hard to train for, and gear intensive.  I was a vegetarian for 17 years and never even considered that might become more popular someday, and now some years after I gave that up it has.

There's no telling what critical mass of acceptance subjects require before something triggers broader interest in them, or how that all works.  Tea may or may not ever become the next big thing, it may never really "have a moment."  Whether or not that happens doesn't seem to matter.  It's an interesting, multi-faceted, essentially bottomless subject that means a lot to some people, and that's enough.

Tea as the hottest latest trend in Bangkok

This really is about tea as a local trend, and food trends in general.  A local tea acquaintance, the owner of the Seven Suns cafe, mentioned hosting a booth at a Matcha Mania event in the Paragon mall, arguably one of the two main malls in Bangkok.  I checked it out and it was well received; crowded, even.

lines at Matcha Mania

Matcha booths and shops are everywhere, edging into bubble tea's market share.  I'm not sure how an event theme really could ramp up the "mania" much but it did seem to.  I might have tried a Seven Suns matcha drink there but I did so not that long ago (which I wrote about here) and I wasn't into waiting in line.  I've been considering trying out hojicha soft serve for a very long time--it's around--but didn't finally get to that either.

menu board at the next booth over; it looked ok

that sausage (with a recipe for it here)

I didn't try any tea at all.  I'm not all that into matcha, except in ice cream, and eating a desert item right before dinner made no sense.  I had walked by a nice looking Northern Thai herb-spiced sausage on the way and bought some of that for dinner on the way out, along with sticky rice.

Other tea and food trends

I'm not a "trend" person.  I'm from a small town in North Western Pennsylvania, where time doesn't bother to cause changes in the normal sense.  I like it that I live in a part of Bangkok where the decades passing also doesn't change things much.  I wear plain clothes and drink plain, hot, traditional teas.  I suppose if one looks at the longest term some of those teas aren't traditional, since the story is that shou was invented in the 70s, and I drink a little of them, and I like tea style variations from places like Vietnam and Indonesia that probably didn't exist a decade or two ago.  But the general point is the same.


Related to transitions back in the States I feel like I might somehow completely become a stranger in my own country at some point, but visiting once in awhile helps offset that.  My wife and I moved to Bangkok from Honolulu a decade ago so that's plenty of time frame for changes to happen.  I was just back in PA over the Christmas holidays, and in Washington, DC, and NYC, with a very short stop in State College, where I first went to school (PSU).  All of those places probably lag a little compared to the West coast for transition pace but it was comforting to see it all about the same as I remembered.  Except NYC; I've only been there a few times, so it's not as familiar.

An online contact just mentioned a "cheese tea" trend that apparently became popular in China way back in May, mixing cream cheese into tea as a beverage, topped with a bit of sugar, salt, or some spicing to give it a twist.  I just saw a notice that I can get it here, but I'd be ok with never following up on that.  Oddly that online contact lives in Poland, and she cited a Polish tea vendor's Youtube video about how to make it yourself, I guess all typical of the world getting smaller.

at that mall; not exactly the same thing

As I was wandering that mall looking for that tea event a friend back in the US asked me by message if I'd tried a lighter form of Japanese cheesecake that is popular now, and my initial reaction was "of course not."  Then I remembered that my wife's cousin's wife is a baker, and she gave us a type of cake I wasn't familiar with over the weekend, so apparently I'd already been eating it for breakfast this week (Japanese cotton cheesecake, per her description).  It was nice.  There is more of running theme here than there might seem.

There is an emphasis on things being trendy in Bangkok.  I suppose it varies by where you go, and Paragon mall is a main place for that sort of thing.  That name seems to mean "exemplar" as much in the sense of exemplifying trends than relating to being an ideal mall.  I suppose it's nice though, to the extent that any is different from the others.


One local magazine covers updating preference shifts as well as any, BK Magazine, as in this post about 7 terrific Bangkok tea houses that are very serious about their cha.  Cha is Thai for tea too, for what that's worth.  The first three they mention are worth a look, which includes Seven Suns.  The two others I'm approving of are the old Chinatown cafe (Double Dogs), and the last a good place to spend $20 for small pot of tea, Peace Oriental.  I visited there once a couple of years ago, and it was ok, but I don't plan to ever go there again.


It's drifting off theme a bit but I'm in a FB foodies group here, even though I'm definitely not a foodie.  I cook; I guess that could count as partial credit.  They discuss restaurants more than novel food items, split between considering higher end places and debating who has the best burgers, pizza, Mexican, etc.  All the Mexican food I've tried here was somewhere between mediocre and awful but it would help to be a foodie, to visit restaurants a few times a week and explore further than I do.

The mall visit got me thinking more about trends, and that cheesecake.  Some looking around turned up ricotta cheese pancakes, and a Japanese tart version of cheesecake, and a place selling a hojicha flavored version of shaved ice.  Shaved ice is popular now, not the version from Hawaii, the fruit syrup flavored range, but the variation from Taiwan instead, more focused on fruit integration and use of condensed milk and other sauces.

It's not the same thing at all but I finally saw an I-Hop here, Thailand's first.  That's right, an International House of Pancakes (which I don't think was really all that international in the past).  It's strange to be mentioning low end breakfast places in the middle of discussing tea, desert trend themes, and foodie culture but it does connect.

not exactly nailing the updated diner theme

The common ground relates to the source of trends not always being so trendy where they are from.  A traditional Chinese tea shop or cafe would be a run of the mill thing in China, but in North-Western PA it would seem very exotic.  Who knows when they'll ever get a Thai restaurant back there but here it's grocery store complex food court fare.  Mexican and Italian food restaurants that go out of business due to lack of interest back in the States could potentially match the best related foods versions Bangkok has to offer.


Pancakes are sort of the same here; a bit exotic.  I was a little shocked and horrified that they didn't have bacon, sausage, or hash browns on that I-Hop menu, and I'm still a little rattled about it.  I was a vegetarian for about 17 years so I can take or leave meat more than most but it's still disrespectful to the theme of American breakfast.  It's downright un-American.  Somehow waffles are common here but french toast and pancakes not so much; I'm not sure how that worked out.  Sausage is common here but  Jimmy Dean-style breakfast links would be as out of place as dim sum or pho back in the Midwest (or som-tum, Thai papaya salad; you get the idea).

If this was going to circle back to tea it probably should have already.  Those recommended cafes work as a transition; the two new ones and one older version sum up what's going on in Bangkok.  TWG is on the list, and Twinings cafe might as well be, and Whittard I just walked by in Paragon.  High end commercial, traditional versions of tea aren't really of interest to me.  The one Japanese tea shop sounded nice, and that was about it.  People probably bought more matcha drinks at those booths in that mall event over the last ten days than traditional pots of tea at all of those other places combined over the same time frame, or maybe a factor of ten more.

I'm behind in trying different flavored ices

It seems odd to conclude that only matcha is even close to being the hottest latest trend in tea in Bangkok.  It'll be funny if "cheese tea" really takes off.



Good oolong or pu'er teas just don't seem to fit the mold of what catches on (or mould, for British people).  As with in the US better tea may just gradually ramp up for years until it finally really catches on, and if that seems to happen suddenly the reasons why will probably only make sense in retrospect.