Disappearing tea leaves

My sister has arrived and today we visited the supermarket to get various things she needed - including real tea leaves, because she doesn't like tea bags. There was not much to choose from. It's nearly all tea bags, and if that was not enough, even in 'ordinary' tea tea bags, the number of varieties is diminishing. In fact there were three unequal parts of the tea section of the supermarket. The largest part was devoted to various herbal varieties, from the mass produced Twinings, etc. to smaller more boutique type labels. Then there is the green tea, chai, white tea and rooibos section and then there is the 'ordinary' tea section. Of the three sections the herbal section is the one that is growing and the 'ordinary' tea is the one that is shrinking. And there were very few varieties of leaf tea.

So you've got two different things going on here. On the one hand, people are not making tea in teapots any more with tea leaves. Though that said there was a small section of tea infuser type jugs - not teapots exactly - I think they called them infusers. So what do you put in them I wonder? Surely not tea bags. At the same time as tea leaves are disappearing from the supermarket shelves though, you have the growth of specialist shops like T2 (another day), which mostly sells tea leaves. It has a few of its more popular varieties in tea bags, but mostly it's leaves. And I'm guessing that posh restaurants would serve tea made from leaves - but I am guessing here.

And the tea bags themselves are no longer just simple square things like those in the picture above. You can also get a very wide variety of shapes and materials in tea bags. The latest thing seems to be those pyramid shaped ones. Having just watched a promotional video from Twinings I think I learnt that they put a better grade of tea into them and they have more room to expand. Finer tea, more bitterness is what I think I gleaned from the video. I also found an explanatory article in The Sydney Morning Herald, which talked about the worrisome topic of plastic in the tea bag. Are we poisoning ourselves and the planet when we use tea bags? Apparently not but it is better to use tea leaves. Pyramid tea bags - well Twinings ones anyway - are fully compostable - the others are not.

Tea bags are easy though aren't they? I'm not a tea drinker myself and so I am not au fait with the finer points of making a good cup of tea. And in Japans and China, of course, it's an art that takes ages. And so I resort to tea bags. And so it seems do the majority of people. Well judging by what's on the supermarket shelf anyway. After all supermarkets just respond to demand. If it doesn't sell it's removed.

Which brings me to the second thing that's going on. The move from 'ordinary' tea to herbal and green teas. Whenever I am at one of my book groups and people are having tea, more than half of them choose to have a herbal tea. My husband likes lapsing souchong tea - and Coles at least used to sell Twinings tea bags of this variety. Indeed they used to have quite a wide range of teas in tea bags. Now I think Coles has just three or four. I don't know about Woolworths but I wouldn't expect it to be very different. We seem to have come down to just English Breakfast, Russian Caravan, Earl Grey, Orange Pekoe and Australian Afternoon. I expect Twinings still make all those other things, but the supermarkets don't stock them. It's another aspect of that health food thing isn't it? Green tea is (I think) supposed to be better for you. I must say I like it as a perfume, but I'm not tempted to drink it.

I'll keep watching this part of the supermarket with interest. It's an evolving space.