There's no compelling reason to pass on my opinion on tea themes now, just because it's back to the time of year I started blogging, but I miss writing beyond review scope here.
Rather than fill in more on how my experience has changed, since it hasn't much, I'll limit this to some thoughts on themes that define where tea culture and the tea industry is right now.
tea culture in the US: it's not really moving forward, compared to where it was 5 years ago. If anything a good-sized, but still limited, group of people exploring tea through social media discussion and online content consumption have went quiet. It's natural, learning and exploring, then seeing that new range as just normal, and learning less. Social media groups are changing, and some are dying; I'll add other sections on that. The tea itself, preferences and options, hasn't really changed.
tea culture in Thailand: in some ways Thai cultural development themes mirror and lag behind the US, and in others they don't. In both countries very few people being really into tea has continued, with many joining groups, in real life and in social media, but that also leveled off. Small event functions finally started to work locally this year, one mall-based conference oriented event in Bangkok, that finally didn't also include coffee. Better quality version production has finally made more of a start in Thailand, lagging behind Vietnam's progress, way behind original source countries like China, Japan, and Taiwan.
tea culture online: not different than last year; Discord groups and Reddit sub participation picks up, and Facebook groups go quieter. One main specialty tea FB group, Gong Fu Cha, is slightly more active than 2 or 3 years ago, but vendors drive the activity, so a lot of that is marketing. New active members there tend to be relatively new to tea, so it's right back to where online discussions were 6 to 8 years ago, exploring new types, and working out which vendors are actually good sources.
I don't actively discuss tea online that much, beyond sometimes answering questions on Reddit. It's harder now for me to keep learning, and my peers in background and experience have talked enough, for the most part. I moderate a FB tea group, International Tea Talk, but it's mostly dead now, evolved beyond it's more active phase, even though it has over 30,000 members.
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FB groups can still work well for organizing local gatherings |
tea sources: a new wave of Chinese vendors is driving Western facing sales to "the West," or at least trying to. Chen Sheng Hao, a pu'er producer, and Oriental Leaf, a mixed type reseller, work as good examples. Or ITea World is an example of a positive form with some kinks still being worked out; they used free sample distribution to engage online discussion, overdoing it for final amount of feedback in the Reddit r/tea space. Use of novel forms of sample sets also works for them, but then ironing out uniform quality is ongoing; some versions are better than others, so value is a bit all over the place. Selling sample sets offsets that; people should be able to tell what is better and what they like best.
I see this development as a good thing, as a potential for competition for a very limited set of main Western vendors. Some new sources, including Western options, are selling pretty mediocre tea at medium pricing levels, and some actually go beyond that, offering novel range and good value. Jesse's tea house, a Tik Tok based vendor, has replaced Mei Leaf, a Youtube based vendor, for drawing criticism for selling overpriced and medium quality tea. Both vendors do serve a positive industry role in marketing tea to a new audience, and raising awareness. That seems to get missed in the specialty tea industry, that if all the vendors only try to capture the most of a small market it will never grow. Running standard ads isn't the only way to spread awareness and raise demand; novel forms of events can build up both slowly, bit by bit.
producer issues: Darjeeling has been suffering due to shifting costs and demand context for years, it seems, so that's not new, but eventually the last plantation will be owned by a corporation instead of a family there. Chinese producers seem to do ok. A dip in the Chinese economy poses challenges, but built-up demand in China and in the West has set a strong foundation for demand for them.
Nothing is really new; no new push for organic / sustainability themes, no new product ranges, and nothing novel related to presentation forms (eg. new compressed styles, although some experimentation continues). Using health claims for marketing seems relatively played out, which is interesting related to tea probably really being fairly healthy.
Trump and tariffs: this is the newest concern; a new wave of import taxes may well increase the cost of tea in the US. Or maybe not. Since tea is barely produced in the US at all, with limited exceptions, this wouldn't make sense, given the drive to make US companies more competitive, but not everything Trump and Republicans do is supposed to make sense. It would be strange to have tea drinkers shoulder more tax burden; it's too small a factor to make any real difference, and doesn't relate to the broader trade issues. But it could come across as vindictive, which would be part of the point, to escalate opposition, in theory to other ongoing unfairness.
I doubt it will change much. Tea costing 10 to 20% more wouldn't be a welcome change but also not so significant. A larger new tax would sting more.
new styles, origins, something new being popular: it's going to get harder to know what trends even are with social media becoming quieter. There hasn't been a hot new source region in years, as far as I know; Georgia seemed novel and promising some years ago, and Nepal long before that. Sheng pu'er keeps sucking the air out of the room related to popular range. Surely a broader, but still small, group of well-exposed sheng drinkers has moved on to appreciating different range, well-aged versions, good quality boutique styles, and so on. South East Asian versions gain traction, over time.
The standard list of vendors are probably doing slightly better year to year (Yunnan Sourcing, White 2 Tea, Crimson Lotus, and so on), but this doesn't change anything.
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a hybrid style Greengold Georgian white / green tea, reviewed here |
inflation as a factor in the US: probably anyone earning in the lower half of incomes in the US is struggling a bit from price increases, especially over the last two years. Most people already buying $100 sheng pu'er cakes probably weren't in that group. It could serve as a barrier to larger scale entry to better tea, for some, but limited awareness was already working out like that. Specialty tea never was positioned to couple with a broad cultural form shift, eg. to benefit as coffee and craft beer had before. If anything those other trends getting old for people might be the next main wave for tea; those interests are fine for a long time, but lots of types of preference go in cycles.
what's next?: it's never easy to tell. I had always been concerned that multi-level marketing would make a mess within tea exposure, but that came and went quietly (Steepology, was that?). Intuitively new solutions like automated marketing and sales based on drop-shipping should've already happened, but didn't. Or kind of did, but didn't gain any traction. Automatically created content made by people who know almost nothing about tea are just too easy to spot.
Jesse's tea business shows how just being one short step ahead of the beginner learning curve can work, and it's odd that's not more of the norm. But then the smallest tea businesses have always struggled, and it's not easy for most people to create high quality social media content, and then use that for effective marketing.
I think earlier producer-side development progress elsewhere might consolidate within the Western markets in a different form at some point. Vietnam has been driving better tea production and vending for a few years, and options have broadened in places like Georgia, Darjeeling, and Assam. There's always a brief window when a new origin area emerges when novel offerings and value are both exceptional, then when demand catches up it transitions to more standard priced range. All that happens based on small, well-organized vendors transitioning to become medium sized.
A large foreign vendor like Moychay, the Russian version of Yunnan Sourcing, sort of, has been poised to play a larger role in Western sales for years, having established an accessible branch in the EU in Amsterdam, but they're still not such a familiar name. Growing local demand by building pleasant tea drinking spaces and holding events supports their business, it just doesn't drive international awareness.
No one is driving any industry change or expansion. Blog writing, like this one, have lost a lot of following, and Youtube content never gained it back. There are thousands of people showing photos of tea on Instagram, and hundreds of people selling tea event services and training, or probably that is thousands of people globally, counting events, education, and tourism oriented options. It's still not changing much. Few of us take up interests and lifestyle practices by deeply exploring and going all-in on novel themes like specialty tea. More people just drink a little tea, often moving slowly from tea-bag flavored blends on to better loose versions of flavored blends. It's fine, but per the perspective of the other kinds of tea enthusiasts it misses a lot of potential.
A broad group of people have normalized drinking decent tea, following most of the learning curve that they ever will. That group is broad but very limited in overall scale. Specialty tea may never "have its moment," in a scaled-up industry demand sense, but for them it already is, every day.
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I'm not usually in pictures here, here with my family |
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the tastings are better with visitors |
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