There’s a Reason Americans Don’t Like Tea

Contrary to 2020 predictions, it’s not going to be the next big trend — and that’s a good thing

All photos by Johnny Fogg

Have you heard the news? Tea, one of the world’s oldest beverages, second only to water in daily drinking, is so hot right now. The sober-curious are guzzling it, with more than a little help from savvy Instagram marketers. The wellness industrial complex is making a mint on matcha face masks. Fine dining restaurants are launching high-end tea programs to rival their bar menus. And nootropic nuts love tea’s so-called calming compound, L-theanine, almost as much as CBD.

The way Thrillist’s Kevin Alexander put it in October, spotlighting the tea industry’s annual trade show in Las Vegas, “the energy around the American artisanal tea world feels much like the craft cocktail scene in the late ‘90s.” Finding himself among a crew of tea nerds that trade single-bush oolongs like teens used to exchange mixtapes, Alexander’s narrative brims with optimism about tea’s bright American future: “We’re still in those early adopter stages…but it’s professionalizing slowly….The true believers are making progress.” It’s only a matter of time, it seems, before Good Tea is as great an American success story as third-wave coffee or natural wine, with similar mainstream recognition.

As one of those true tea believers — see my collection of 50 pounds of loose leaf in climate-controlled storage, several forays into tea journalism at origin, and my consulting work for specialty tea companies — I should be thrilled by this news. But I don’t buy it. Because if American tea habits are truly changing, it’s more of a trickle than a surge. And more importantly, the best thing that can happen to tea in America — ubiquitous since this country’s founding yet never truly understood, a perpetual stranger in a strange land — is not to have a “moment” at all.

The best thing that can happen to tea in America . . . is not to have a “moment” at all.