4 minute read
Drinks // Tea
Spill the tea
There’s no denying coffee has dominated the cafe scene in Australia, but are the tides turning towards tea?
WORDS Madeline Woolway
THE EVERGREEN TEA plant Camellia sinensis is native to East Asia, however it was the British who introduced Australia to tea after the UK began producing the product in India during the 19th century. Although tea was once a highly prized and expensive luxury good, it has since become commoditised. Now, we are largely black tea with milk drinkers, who pay limited attention to the nuances found in different preparations of the shrub’s cured leaves.
Botanical Lab
Health and wellness trends are behind an approximate 3 per cent increase in sales of green tea, blended teas and herbal tisanes, but black tea remains flat, according to founder and director of Australian Tea Masters, Sharyn Johnston. “Functional blends and wellness blends are growing rapidly,” says Johnston. “Kombucha is one of the fastest-growing categories in the world.” Increasing by 4 per cent, the beverage is moving quickly, as are readyto-drink or bottled teas.
Others in the industry have also noted the effect of consumers’ current obsession with health and wellness. “It’s weird to see trends come and go,” says Linda Le, general manager of Botanical Lab, a tea-house-cum-florist in Brisbane’s Fish Lane. Since opening in November 2018, Le has noticed bubble tea sales surge, too, suggesting they’ve “re-invented what tea is like”. The trend has proven to be one of the most popular items on Botanical Lab’s extensive menu, which also includes traditional teas, iced tea and tisanes.
For Gunjan Aylawadi, who owns the recently opened Flyover Fritterie in Sydney’s CBD, it’s not just wellness driving customers to her chai house. Aylawadi’s various riffs on the Indian brew are appealing to drinkers looking for an afternoon pick-me-up that’s lighter on caffeine.
Botanical Lab
Tea does have caffeine, but even the stronger varieties clock in at well under the amount doled out by a cup of joe. “You can’t drink coffee all day, or most people can’t, but we can drink tea,” says Johnston. They’re words Aylawadi lives by: “We drink so many cups of chai — it’s not even up for counting.”
The attribute is helping tea play catchup with Australia’s otherwise coffee-crazed culture. “It’s nowhere near as popular as coffee, but it’s definitely gaining a following,” says Le.
Based on the observations of Aylawadi, Johnston and Le, there’s clearly room for both beverages in the market — the question is whether venues can bridge the gap between the two.
“If you can understand coffee, you can understand tea,” says Johnston. Australian cafés may historically have been the domain of opaque tea bags packed with low-grade leaves, but Johnston has seen a change, with many venues introducing tea menus. “I’ve done quite a lot of tea menu development of late and we’ve got tea sommelier training starting to happen now.”
When it comes to helping consumers navigate their vast menu of designer teas, Le starts with the same approach a sommelier would take. “I ask them what their go-to tea or coffee is, just to see what their palate is like,” she says. “We also offer tea blending workshops, which are all about giving more information to consumers.”
It’s not just about quantity, though — any variety of tea is only as good as the leaves it’s made of and the method it’s made by.
When it comes to sourcing and storing tea, following a few simple rules is all it takes to maintain a high standard. A good supplier should offer tasting notes, be transparent about origin and help select the right range to suit different venues, explains Johnston. Brewing instructions are also worth their weight in gold.
To source her chai, Aylawadi works closely with a Sydney-based supplier who uses premium-quality single-estate assam tea leaves as a base for Flyover Fritterie’s custom chai blends. When it comes to the brew, it’s all about balance. “The black tea has to shine,” says Aylawadi. “It can’t just be about spices. A lot of the time, chai [has] really strong notes of cloves or cinnamon.” The spices shouldn’t overpower the tea.
To keep their organic tea — sourced from Taiwan and China — in peak condition, Botanical Lab stores their bags in amber glasses. “[With] too much air and too much light, it loses flavour,” explains Le.
On the topic of bags, Johnston says pyramid, biodegradable bags are just as good as loose leaf tea. “What you put in the bag is what’s important for the quality of the tea,” she says. The style of bag is also crucial. The double chamber opaque bags associated with supermarket brands don’t allow the tea to infuse properly.
Once introduced to the world of tea, Johnston says most drinks professionals will find an exciting new world to explore and realise the parallels to coffee. “They often grow in the same countries next to each other and their terroirs are often very similar,” she says. There are even similarities in brewing. “The tea sommelier program is really focused on training people to be able to use things they have in a café,” adds Johnston. “It’s interesting for people to learn alternate brews.”
Johnston lists pour overs such as Chemex and V60s as current trends as well as options to make things easier during busy services such as preweighing and filling bags.
Le, however, does caution against the urge to rely on any old espresso machine. “Coffee shops often use the hotwater from the coffee machine, but it’s so easy to burn the tea leaves,” she says.
Water quality in Australia isgenerally adequate for tea brewingpurposes, but it’s important to beaware of the details that could beaffecting the cupping quality for betteror worse. “I feel people don’t payattention to those details, which makesa difference,” says Le.
Ultimately, the onus is on the industry to turn the tables on what’s become a misrepresented beverage. Even with the added cost of premium leaves and methodical preparation, the margins remain high. “The good thing about tea is that it’s the highest profit area,” says Johnston. “It’s a lot easier to make money out of tea than coffee.”
So? “Make your tea offering as goodas your coffee offering,” says Johnston. ■
