The most difficult problem tea faces today – the popularity of tea bags.
Today, tea bags make up over two thirds of all tea sales in the U.S. These bags, however, usually contain the cheapest tea material possible; delivering little more than a brown-colored liquid.
Given this as the well-accepted, popular standard, it's not surprising that many people in the West think of tea as a bland, second-tier drink.
Modern tea bags appeared in the early 1900s. A popular story says tea bags came to life as a result of an accident.
Thomas Sullivan, a tea merchant from New York, was looking for ways to cut production costs by sending loose tea in small, hand-sewn silk pouches instead of costly tins – the standard at the time. His clients, confused by this new packaging, started throwing the bags with tea in hot water.
Sullivan began receiving many requests for these "tea bags" and realized he had struck gold. Tea bags first appeared commercially around 1904 and quickly gained popularity worldwide. Since the tea leaves were still in the silk bag, the quick, easy clean-up made the bags enticingly convenient.
This convenience, unfortunately, came at a high price: flavor.
In order for a tea leaf to fully release its flavor, it needs room to expand. Because tea in bags had less room to open up, the quality was diminished. So the merchants came up with a solution – smaller leaves, which need much less room to open up.
With this decision, the slippery slope of tea’s decline began. Since the size and quality of tea leaves no longer mattered, merchants started using much cheaper grades of tea known as "dust." This is the lowest ranking that tea can achieve – the bottom of the tea barrel. These tiny fragments infuse very quickly and give plenty of color and strength, but much less aroma and complexity, and often more bitterness and astringency than good whole-leaf tea.
This state of tea mediocrity has been plaguing the West for several decades now. Most sellers in the U.S. offer only bottom-of-the-barrel tea products, leaving consumers to believe that there is nothing better available. This is but a far cry from the abundance of flavor and aroma found in a cup of full-leaf premium tea.
Rebuilding tea’s reputation in the West may seem like a long shot, but let’s keep in mind that there once was a time when coffee was all canned, instant, and stale. Then, a few innovative and passionate roasters came along to show consumers how much better it could be. Most people are no longer drinking instant coffee.
The same holds true for tea. So we are working to educate people and provide them with high-quality tea, hoping that someday most folks won’t be drinking dark-colored water with tea bags inside, but will instead enjoy all the flavor, aroma, and health benefits that good-quality tea has to offer.