Fitting you to a tea

Actually, this month you might want to raise a toast to another ancient brewed beverage - the one most consumed worldwide after water.

Tea.

Joe Simrany, president of the Tea Association of the USA, said January's designation since 1991 as National Hot Tea Month celebrates tea's many varieties and health benefits.

The idea, he said, is to get people's attention in the United States, where coffee is king.

According to Simrany, until fairly recently the typical tea drinker was a woman over 45 years old. However, with the popularity of specialty teas and ready-to-drink teas in bottles and cans, he said, the typical tea drinker is nearly the same as the typical water and soda drinker, with specialty tea drinkers being educated 20- to-50 year-olds, and ready-to-drink tea drinkers being teens and young adults.

Although tea is an increasing presence in coffee shops, Ramie Camarena, events and communication coordinator for Milwaukee-based Alterra Coffee Roasters, says Alterra averages seven coffee drinkers for each tea drinker in its cafes.

Colin Scanes, a British-born-and-raised administrator at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, is the kind of guy Simrany would like to convert. Scanes is a confirmed coffee lover who has two or three cups a day - down from 20 or 25 cups a day.

He said he never really drank tea as a child but did choke down a cup or two at the homes of other teens when he began dating and had to impress a girl's parents.

"I had a certain amount of revulsion about tea," said Scanes, UWM's vice chancellor for research and economic development. "The tea leaves in a pot looked really gross."

Simrany said part of his group's mission is to publicize new research about the health benefits of different kinds of tea. That might be why, among some coffee drinkers, tea has a reputation as being good for you rather than fun for you - something to soothe scratchy throats or open stuffy sinuses.

"I drink tea if it's served, but not otherwise," said Tony Castro as he headed into Alterra's Riverwest headquarters for his daily dose of caffeine. "Maybe if I'm sick, I might have it with honey, I guess."

Rebecca Schuster, a barista at the Riverwest Alterra, said the only time she can get her boyfriend to drink tea is when he's ill. She, on the other hand, happily quaffs both coffee and tea.

"I usually have a cup of coffee or a double shot of espresso to begin my shift," Schuster said. "By the end of my shift, I'll have moved on to tea to come down from the caffeine."

Harmony St. Laurent, manager at Anaba Tea Room in Shorewood, understands the ritual.

"I used to be almost exclusively coffee, but now that I've been working here for a few months, I rarely ever drink it," she said. "I like the way tea makes me feel. The caffeine buzz is a lot more sustained and not as sharp, and there's not as much of a crash.

"It just makes you feel really good."