Wine prices on the up - good for the tea market?

25 Jun 2012 | Comments |

Tea companies like us tend to pay a lot of attention to the wine market (there's lots of similarities), so when we see headlines like these, it's bound to grab the attention of tea lovers:

"Sales of wine costing more than £10 a bottle are surging" »
(from the Guardian)

Of course, it's good news. For one thing, it's encouraging to see more people willing to focus on quality over price. Our whole raison d'etre is that we provide a quality and taste of authentic Chinese tea literally unavailable anywhere else, which means the price looks pretty high compared to your bog-standard supermarket teabag. Consumers that are more adventurous, fussy about quality and less concerned with just 'cheap' is great for the fine foods industry as a whole.

But perhaps most encouraging for us is that small, independent wine retailers are on the rise.

It's a big risk for consumers to buy from a small company, especially when it comes to food or drink. But, at least in the tea industry, the best quality tea is coming through small, independent tea retailers like Min River Tea who can source direct from small, artisan tea farms and supply a level of quality that larger companies ignore.

It makes us pretty excited about the future of the tea industry in the UK, to see positive signs like adventurous consumers willing to try new things and demanding better quality from their staple-drinks like wine and tea!

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