More miracle TEA, vicar?
Bless me, they’re even drinking it on The Archers!
FERMENTED, slightly fizzy and served cold from a can, it’s enough to make the vicar choke on his cucumber sandwiches. But kombucha tea, a favourite of Gwyneth Paltrow and Madonna, has made it all the way from Los Angeles to Ambridge, as listeners to The Archers learned last week.
Made by adding yeast and bacteria to sweetened tea, kombucha doesn’t sound appetising but fans say it aids digestion and improves mental clarity. With flavours ranging from hibiscus and lime to blueberry and lavender, kombucha is already a hit with the gym-going classes, thanks to its supposed anti-ageing properties.
Some even swear by it as a nonalcoholic alternative to prosecco, claiming it offers a similar buzz to booze. ‘It offers a huge variety and depth of flavour from a very natural brewing process using just tea and sugar,’ says Louise Avery, of the LA Brewery, a microbrewery based in Suffolk.
Now kombucha is creeping into the mainstream, with Tom Archer on the radio soap planning to sell it – along with a bewildering array of weird and strangely flavoured teas taking hold on the high street.
Last week, The Scottish Mail on Sunday revealed that a Highland distillery and a tea firm are producing Tomatin Whisky Tea, redolent of the single malt but alcohol-free.
Tea as a drink is thought to have existed in the Far East for 2,000 years, but in 2017, the cup that cheers is having a moment. On the Ocado website there are more than 500 different types available, ranging from popcorn tea and blueberry muffin tea, to cartons of the unsweetened matcha green variety.
Bubble teas, originating from Taiwan, are also gaining ground. Milky, tea-based or fruit-infused, they feature chewy globes of starch nestling at the bottom of the cup, which you suck up through a fat straw.
Britons have always drunk more tea than coffee – 165million cuppas a year, compared to 70million of coffee, according to the UK Tea and Infusions Association.
But it has not captured the zeitgeist in the same way as coffee.
Tea manufacturers have been slower to innovate than their coffee counterparts with their sprinkles, steam and caramel shots – until now. Classic black tea sales may have dropped by 5 per cent in the past year but herbal infusions, popular with women, have soared.
More tea shops are springing up with speciality menus, and kitchen cupboards which once housed only a box of Yorkshire teabags are now home to mint, camomile and green varieties.
The dictionary may tell you that tea is made from an infusion of leaves from the plant, but the name now seems to be a catch-all for anything that isn’t coffee.
Confused? Here’s our guide to some of the tastiest – and some of the strangest…