American Plate - Bite #29: Tea and Coffee

By modern standards, tea is the hot drink of choice for England, China, and many other countries, while America favors coffee. Such was not always the way. As colonists, Americans enjoyed tea just as much as their mother country. Drinking it was not only done to satisfy thirst; the ritual of preparing and serving tea was just as important as the consumption of it.

Then a little thing called The Boston Tea Party happened. Perhaps you've heard of it? At the time (1773), coffee was not an unheard of drink in the colonies. As of the early 1700s, it was already the preferred breakfast drink. The American Revolution came as a heavy blow to tea's reputation. Drinking it was akin to supporting the redcoats, and coffee's popularity surged. Just as now, its use as an energy booster gave it a leg up.

Tea regained some of its clout after the war, but it was another war that would make coffee the dominant hot drink in American mugs. When Union soldiers came home from the Civil War, they were used to having coffee as part of their standard battlefield rations, and saw no reason to stop. Coffee's popularity proliferated from there, and today, it accounts for 83% of all hot beverages consumed in the United States.

I am certainly contributing to that large percentage. Every workday is kicked off with a mug of coffee, with one or two more throughout the day. I can get pretty irritable without it. I also tend to order it when having breakfast out at a diner or restaurant. That doesn't mean there isn't a place for tea in my heart, too. Hot tea hits the spot when the mood strikes, or if I'm not feeling particularly well. I'm not a huge iced tea drinker, but once in a while, I'll indulge. And then, of course, there's dinner or dim sum at Chinese restaurants, which would feel incomplete without a pot of hot tea on the table.