There is a clear emerging trend in the Australian market away from mainstream black tea to more specialist offerings. Australians’ choices show more discerning palates and product knowledge. This is being driven by marketing and training. Black tea consumption fell overall in the past 12 months, while specialty black teas sales grew by 4%.

We all know that green tea is healthy. However, most of us have only unearthed a fraction of the green teas produced around the world. If we were to drink a different green tea variety every day for the next five years, we would not even come close to tasting all of the green teas produced by China, let alone the other tea producing regions around the world.

Vietnam in 2017 ranked as the world’s seventh-largest producer of tea and fifth in exports. It has 124,000 hectares under production in around half its provinces, including the subtropical North and tropical South. This is roughly the same as Indonesia and three times the tea-growing acreage in Japan. Exports in the first nine months of 2017 were 130,000 metric tons, on an annualized basis. Volumes increased by 12 percent with value growth 11.2 percent.

Just as tea is emblematic of England and core to its history, coffee and Brazil go together as almost one word. And just as Britain is becoming a dynamic and vibrant coffee market, demand for tea is expanding in this nation of 200 million, whose borders touch every South American country except Chile and Ecuador. Tea drinking in Brazil is growing at twice the world average rate.