Now that you've had the cappuccino with caramel are you ready for a green tea latte? While tea has tended to be associated with older consumers, the growth of speciality teas and increased health consciousness are encouraging younger people to take a fresh swig.
New chains with trendy names like "Teavana" and "Tealuxe" vie with the immensely successful Starbucks for the younger tea drinker, offering teas with pizzazz to keep bright minds lively and herbal blends to ease the worries of the day.
"The tea industry is finally coming out with products attracting the younger consumer," Jane McCabe, editor of the Tea and Coffee Trade Journal, said in a recent interview.
She noted growing demand for specialty teas with herbs and fruit flavourings, especially in the United States, and increased awareness of tea's health benefits.
Britain, Iraq, Kuwait and Libya are among the world's top tea-consuming nations per capita, while tea drinking has always been part of the culture in the Middle East, India, Japan and China and is on the rise in the United States.
Tea is, after all, the most consumed beverage in the world after water.
But even the chairman of the United Kingdom Tea Council William Gorman - whose job is to promote tea - says the brew's image is "dull, old-fashioned and uninteresting" compared to coffee with its "sexy, edgy" appeal.
Nevertheless, people in several countries are starting to discover there is more to the world of tea than the standard version offered as an afterthought in their local coffee shop.
Tea drinking has always had a socialising element in Middle Eastern cultures, where alcohol is either taboo or frowned upon, and that is rubbing off around the world.
"In almost all Eastern cultures, tea is a daily part of peoples' lives. As our world becomes smaller, some Western cultures like the United States are just beginning to discover this beverage," said George Jage, president of the World Tea Expo trade show.
Tea imports for consumption in the US increased to about 101,000 in 2005 from around 88,000 tonnes in 2000, according to data supplied by the International Tea Committee. "The reason for that is the type of tea we are consuming is changing," Joe Simrany, President of the Tea Association of the USA, said.
"We are moving to ready-to-drink tea in cans and bottles, and we are moving to high value speciality tea," he added.
The number of tea shops across the United States has grown from 200 in 1990 to 2,000 in 2005, Simrany said.
Large coffee chains have also started to develop their tea ranges. Starbucks began to expand its offerings in 1999 when it acquired Tazo Tea company. It introduced new tea-based products in US stores in April 2006, including a "green tea latte".
In India, the growing middle classes are fuelling the rise in tea consumption.
"India has one of the largest middle classes in the world, and tea is a very sophisticated part of their life," Gorman said.
According to data supplied by the International Tea Committee, tea absorption in India grew from 653,000 tonnes in 2000 to an estimated 747,000 tonnes in 2005.
There has been a steady increase in Pakistan, where imports for consumption rose from 108,000 tonnes in 1999 to an estimated 127,000 in 2005. There also has been steady growth in Egypt.
Growing health consciousness has also encouraged demand for tea world-wide as it is often perceived as a healthier alternative to coffee.
"People are realising that a cup of tea has less caffeine than a cup of coffee," McCabe said, saying a cup of tea contains between a third and half as much as an equivalent cup of coffee.
Tea has often struggled to compete with coffee in terms of out-of-home consumption because it has tended to be less convenient and more time-consuming to prepare.
But the growth of ready-to-drink tea, as well as more advanced machinery for brewing, is helping to change that.
Coffee analysts say promotional campaigns for coffee and the growth of large coffee chains have encouraged consumption by promoting coffee's image as a modern and youthful drink.
But Gorman cautioned about imitating the coffee-chain trend, which he sees as a fashion that will be short-lived.
"Tea should be very careful about trying to catch up with coffee in terms of sexiness, fashion and style because that is actually quite transient ... tea has more natural values," he said.
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