Scotland’s Piping Hot Coffee and Tea Scenes

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Features

Scotland is a small country. With a population of just under 5.5 million, it has fewer residents than the American state of Wisconsin. Perched atop England, with the same latitude as parts of Alaska, it can feel a long way from anywhere. But over the past decade, Scotland has developed a rather unique specialty coffee and tea scene, taking inspiration from Scandinavia and Australasia and mixing in some definitively Scottish charm.

It has taken a while to get to this point—the first specialty-focused coffee roaster, Artisan Roast, opened in 2007—but today, good coffee can be found in some very out-of-the-way places. There are specialty roasters and cafes nestled in the Highlands and on islands like the Hebrides, Shetland, and Skye, as well as all across the country’s urban centers.

In much the same way, Scotland’s tea scene has grown from one dominated by big brands offering pretty unremarkable blends to include many boutique tea companies and even a small but growing number of commercial tea gardens dotted around the country.

Much of this evolution in both the coffee and tea sectors can be put down to the country’s developing food scene and internationalization more broadly, which has led to interest in higher-quality products of all sorts. Combined with the always-growing demand from abroad for authentic Scottishness, it has allowed a relatively small coffee and tea scene to punch well above its weight.

A Small and Intimate Scene

In the early 2000s, a visitor searching for a good coffee in Scotland would be hard-pressed to find anything at all. There were chains like Costa Coffee and Caffe Nero, local cafes serving cakes to grannies, and the odd independent roaster plugging away with a very small customer base, but not much else. While south of the border companies like Prufrock, Hasbean, and Square Mile were pushing the coffee scene to ever-greater heights, Scotland still seemed stuck in the second wave.

That began to change in 2007 when Artisan Roast opened in Edinburgh, followed a few years later by Glasgow’s Dear Green Coffee Roasters, Steampunk Coffee Roasters in North Berwick, and Glen Lyon Coffee Roasters in Aberfeldy in the Highlands. “There was very little in the way of specialty coffee in Scotland back in early 2011 and nothing in the Highlands,” says Fiona Grant, founder of Glen Lyon Coffee. “Within a couple of years, a handful of other specialty roasters set up in Scotland, and in those early years, it was a pretty small and intimate scene.”

Those trailblazers have since inspired a growing number of new specialty roasters to open around the country, which has, in turn, led to a huge increase in the number of coffee shops serving excellent coffee. “We’ve gone from a landscape of very, very little to this quite diverse landscape,” says John Thompson, Q grader, trainer, and founder of the Edinburgh-based consultancy Coffee Nexus.

Much of the growth can be put down to the increasing interest in specialty coffee more widely across the United Kingdom. The U.K. is Europe’s fifth-largest coffee market, and according to a report by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, while London is “said to have become the European heart of specialty coffee, the British specialty market reaches far beyond the country’s capital.”

The report points to regional coffee festivals as important to this growth, and the Glasgow Coffee Festival has had an outsized impact on introducing the Scottish public to what good coffee can look like. The festival was founded by Dear Green’s Lisa Lawson in 2014, and has since grown to become an essential part of the country’s coffee calendar that draws bigger crowds every year.

In fact, because it sells out so fast each year, the festival will expand in 2025 to accommodate that demand, which Lawson notes demonstrates the Scottish coffee scene’s growing maturity. “The city’s ready for it, Scotland’s ready for it, consumers are already waiting for it,” Lawson says. “It’s exciting for us. We can shake it all up a bit.”

Tea’s Modern Revival

Scotland’s connection to the tea industry goes back centuries, and is intertwined with the British Empire’s history of expansion and conquest. Scottish shipyards built many of the tea clippers that brought the drink back from the colonies—including the famous Cutty Sark—while numerous Scots traveled to India, Sri Lanka, and China to get involved in the trade.

On the consumption side, since tea was introduced to Scotland in the 1600s, it has proven to be hugely popular. Initially too expensive for all but the wealthiest Scots, the influx of tea from colonial estates in India in the 1800s lowered the price and allowed ordinary people to partake. Since then, tea has been an integral part of British and Scottish life. A 2019 survey found that today, Scots drink an average of four cups of tea per day, while according to another survey conducted a year later, Aberdeen and Edinburgh are two of the U.K.’s “most tea-loving cities.”

While most people are still content with straightforward tea bought in bulk from supermarkets, according to Erica Moore, founder of Edinburgh-based Eteaket, that is beginning to shift, especially among younger drinkers. “There’s definitely a modern revival in tea,” Moore says, “and younger people are seeing the power of it and are becoming interested in the health benefits and where it comes from.”

Moore also points to the expanding interest in homegrown tea. An increasing number of commercial tea gardens are dotted around Scotland’s countryside, meeting the demand of Scottish consumers who are trying to shop more locally and overseas drinkers seeking unique tea experiences. “There are some amazing teas coming out of Scotland,” Moore says, although “their volumes are still very low because of all the work that goes into making tea, especially in Scotland with our harsh winters.”

Price remains an issue, not only for Scottish-grown tea but for the high-quality specialty teas that Eteaket and other small companies focus on. “In the UK, people think of tea as a cheap commodity,” Moore says. “So we are helping, along with all the other companies in Scotland, to grow that market so people can have their eyes opened and see all these different amazing teas that are out there.”

Cultural Exchange

Both the coffee and tea scenes in Scotland continue to grow, helped in no small part by the country’s wider food scene and popularity with overseas visitors.

“Scotland as a country has got a really good reputation in terms of food, and I think that’s helped by the tourist market as well,” Thompson says. “It sustains a lot of restaurants and a lot of cafes. For people visiting Scotland, there is an expectation for good food and good coffee when they go out, and I think that carries across to the Scottish people as well.”

Grant agrees and adds that Scots themselves love to travel and have brought an interest in specialty coffee back home with them. Grant herself was inspired to start Glen Lyon after working in South America and traveling down the West Coast of the United States, while Lawson created Dear Green after spending several years working in Australia’s coffee industry.

Because of the country’s small size, Grant does see the possibility for market saturation at some point in the future, although she also notes that the weather will always make people want to indulge in a good quality hot beverage. “There’s such an appreciation and demand for good coffee in Scotland, and so many fantastic roasteries throughout the country. Maybe it’s something to do with our cold, northern climate that makes us want to bunker down in a cafe over a delicious cup of coffee.”