It’s a summer evening and the Wild Lily Tea Room in Chelsea, the heart of Manhattan’s art gallery district, is full of twenty and thirty-somethings. They aren’t swilling Stoli with a twist, but sipping Japanese tea—straight up. Scenes such as this, where the nuances of teas can take over a conversation, and endorsements of the virtues of tea by celebrities, make it clear that tea-drinking is no passing fad.

tea today
When Bigelow Tea—the $100-million family-owned tea company located in Fairfield—launched a national ad campaign in October 2005 with Joe Torre, Manager of the New York Yankees, the message was clear: the average Joe can drink tea and enjoy it. Torre began to drink up to eight cups of Bigelow green tea during ball games when his nutritionist recommended he drink green tea after a bout with prostate cancer in 1999. “We’re a sixty-year-old brand and we have to stay in lock step with the consumer,” says Cindi Bigelow, co-president of the family-owned business with her sister Lori. Cindi oversees the company’s sales, marketing, finance and manufacturing operations while Lori is responsible for the research and development, tea blending and quality control.

Sixty years is a long time to sell any product, so it’s no surprise that tea and tea drinkers have changed over the years. Today, an office at Bigelow displays dozens of the company’s tea products, including its top seller, Earl Grey, along with an assortment of green, black and herbal teas, such as Pomegranate Pizzazz, which is flavored with real fruit juices. This year, the company introduced an organic green tea and it is also expanding into the more sophisticated white tablecloth restaurant market with the new upscale pyramid-shaped Novus brand of loose tea.

Upscale tea in America? Apparently so. Joe Simrany, President to the Tea Association of the U.S.A., says tea served in some of Manhattan’s best hotels can set patrons back nearly $50 per serving. Not too long ago, the thought of taking time for afternoon tea, and paying that much for it, would have been considered crazy, he adds. But no longer. “I talked to a tea room operator in Long Beach, California and they pulled in $17,000 in two days over Mother’s Day.”