The rising tide of young consumers who take “tea” increasingly look beyond Camellia sinensis to seek out fruit-forward, sweet infusions.
Modern fruit and floral tea blends trace their ancestry to ancient tribal apothecaries and, more recently, to a Hamburg warehouse where Stefan Gieschke secretly spent evenings mixing aromatic bits of this and that.
Gieschke joined Schwedt & Gesing interTee Handelsgesellschaft mbH in the logistics department during the 1990s and eventually became head of import. While working there, he began sneaking sips of tea left behind by the professional tasters. “I could not wrap my head around what the tea tasters found so special — everything was bitter and much too strong for me,” he recounts.
Inspired to innovate, he would sneak into the dark warehouse stacked with sacks of tea and herbs to experiment with creating mild fruit blends, developing several formulas based on what he now calls “my naive ideas.”
The blends became best sellers, earning millions. Today, Gieschke, 47, is managing director of Kirchner, Fischer & Co. GmbH and its wholesale brand, Mount Everest Tea, in Elmshorn, Germany. Founded in 1793, Kirchner is the oldest tea importer on the European mainland.
Nowadays, the tea blends consumed in Germany, Poland, the United Kingdom, and France are very often based around herbs, fruit, and flowers.
“Twenty-five years ago, there were only a few herbal and fruit tea blends. Recipes were far from the complex and versatile blends we know today,” says Gieschke. Beginning in the early 1990s, tea tasters in traditional tea houses experimented with an ever-wider variety of herbs, florals like hibiscus, and exotic fruit, resulting in “very creative fruit teas and tea blends.”
Gieschke even experimented with vegetables, in a blend named “Leipziger Allerlei,” a mix of freeze-dried vegetables and tomato-lychee flavor. “Unfortunately, I was 15 years too early. Consumers were not yet ready for my creation,” he says.
Remedy in a cup
Herbal blends started to boom in Germany beginning in 2004, when the government began charging a €5 fee for any medicine prescribed by a doctor. This prompted many Germans to look for cheaper alternatives. Media coverage at the time promoted self-care and the healing properties of herbs. These factors boosted demand for “cough tea,” “cold tea,” “migraine tea,” and many others.
But herbal teas sold by German pharmacies were expensive because they had to meet high regulatory standards for efficacy. Specialty tea stores, on the other hand, did not face the same scrutiny. Tea shops promoted herbal teas for wellness, offering them at lower prices accessible by a broader market.
German blenders and traders today annually sell more than a billion dollars’ worth of all types of tea, including herbal and Camellia sinensis, according to the German Tea & Herbal Infusions Association, a.k.a. Teeverband (Deutscher Tee & Krautertee Verband). The association’s 2022 annual report states, “We fly the flag for tea, herbal, and fruit infusions as healthy beverages that offer wonderful natural diversity and make key contributions to a daily balanced diet.”
In 2021 German consumers drank 71.5 liters per capita, up 1.5 liters from 70 liters per person in 2020, when consumption reached a record high amid the pandemic. More than half of consumption in 2021 was herbal and fruit infusions.
The German taste for herbal and fruit teas is above the global rate, which is estimated by market research firm Euromonitor to account for 16% of total retail sales of tea.
But global trends are following the German one. Euromonitor writes that sales of these infusions are rising in the United States, Canada, the U.K., Germany, Italy, and Brazil, mainly at the expense of sales of black tea.
Tisanes
The word tisane is French, and it likely originated as ptisanē, the Greek term for a beverage made of crushed grains of pearl barley steeped in hot water. The French term describes any drink made without (sans) tea. The ingredients — whether they are flower petals, bark, fruit peels, pieces of fruit, dried berries, nuts, roots, seeds, spices, bark, or leaves from plants other than Camellia sinensis — are known as inclusions. The most popular tisanes feature mint, chamomile, lavender, and rooibos.
As for customs and tariff classifications, under the World Trade Organization’s Harmonized System, green, black, and flavored tea are tracked under a different code (HS 0902) from infusions or decoctions of herbs, spices, or other plant material in hot water (HS 6687).
Tea from fruit
The first generation of fruit tea blends — typically based around hibiscus, mild apple, and freeze-dried fruits — were strong and sour. Blenders later changed the standard mix to make it milder and sweeter. “To achieve the depth of flavor, the apple pieces were roasted and slightly acidified. Roasted and acidified pieces of pear followed,” Gieschke says.
“Eventually, hibiscus was completely omitted from product development,” he says, adding that modern tea blends are “much more colorful and flashy” than the classics and first-generation tea blends.
Today’s modern fruit tea blends feature flavorful ingredients from many continents: Japanese nashi pears, Aloe vera, goji berries, and mulberries. Gieschke says that looks matter as much as taste. Ingredients that lend a variety of colors, shapes, and textures add to the appeal of a blend. In Eastern Europe, for example, there was a years-long trend for blends featuring bright red prickly pear fruit, harvested from cacti.
Steeped in herbs
Modern herbal infusions have for years been a fast-growing segment in Europe’s tea trade. They have overtaken fruit teas and rooibos teas in stimulating “creative new development,” according to Gieschke. “Flavor combinations with herbs from traditional vacation regions regularly provide fresh input,” he says.
Even before the pandemic, the quest for wellness drove sales of herbal infusions. Market research shows that women consume fruit or herbal infusions more frequently and in greater quantities than men.
The main exporters of herbal blends are Germany, Poland, and the U.K.
Germany’s exports of all forms of tea were 22,000 metric tons in 2021, shipped to 108 countries, with 68% going to countries in the European Union, up 6%, according to Teeverband’s latest annual report. German figures count all “teas” — including Camellia sinensis, herbs, and fruits — as tea. The exports were valued at $241.9 million, according to Tridge, a digital trading platform.
France was Germany’s largest tea customer for the fourth consecutive year, spending $49 million. France’s imports of tea from Germany increased by 8% in volume terms to 312 metric tons, representing about 20% of German tea exports. France was likewise the largest buyer of tea from Poland, importing $50.5 million of tea in 2021.
Tridge ranked Poland second in herbal tea exports in 2021 at 21.8 million metric tons, valued at $263 million (3.3% of the global total). The U.K. exported 16.5 million metric tons (1.7% of the global share).
Barbara Dufrene, Secrétaire Général de l’ Association Tasses & Terroirs, says, “In France, the tea and herbals market is dominated by the multi-nationals, who are not prone to sharing data. But looking at the shelves, one can see that both in the mainstream and premium segment, the number of scented teas and tea and herbal blends is ever increasing.”
Fruit and herbal teas drive growth
Fruit/herbal tea will account for the bulk of new sales in 2022–27, writes market research firm Euromonitor. Sales declined slightly in 2022, “but after two years of healthy growth, tea sales remain higher than their pre-pandemic levels. Fruit/herbal tea continued to see growth in 2022, helped by strong performance in Germany, its biggest market, although it is becoming more popular in most Western European markets.”
Euromonitor interviewed Dilhan C. Fernando, CEO of Dilmah Tea, a global brand based in Sri Lanka, who says that a new generation of consumers is driving change in the tea market, “where for decades, the price has meant more than taste or goodness.”
He says that the pandemic induced more consumers to seek beverages for well-being and enjoyment. “As younger customers turn to tea, their desire to taste adventure is fueling growth in oolong, artisanal teas, and a wider variety of herbs associated with mood or wellness benefits.”
A Euromonitor report, Tea in Western Europe, released in February 2023, predicts solid growth for the forecast period. “The pandemic saw the relatively healthy image of tea appeal to consumers, with players capitalizing on this through the launch of a greater number of teas with a well-being positioning. Health and wellness are expected to continue to be a focus of new product development and marketing in the tea industry during the period 2022–2027.”
Source: Tridge Export Data Summary
Source: Tridge Export Data Summary