Mexico has a long history of herbal teas and infusions. They have been drinking them a lot for a long time. But what about tea? To find this out we interviewed Cecilia Corral Osorio, a tea specialist, the director of the Escuela Mexicana de Té tea school, co-founder of the Tian Té tea company. She together with her team is very active in spreading the tea culture in Mexico.
– Cecilia, how are things going with the tea camellia in Mexico, how challenging is the situation for tea culture in your country?
– It’s not easy, but there is good news! But first, I would like to tell you a bit of the history how it appeared in our country. We first learned about camellia sinensis in the early 18th century, when many Chinese ships arrived as part of the trans-Pacific trade, and among them was one company, the Manila Galleon, which delivered not only spices and silk, but also tea to Mexico. And Mexico started drinking whole leaf Chinese tea. At the beginning of the 19th century, this trade ceased, and starting from the end of the 19th century, tea drinking resumed due to the coming to power of a new president, Porfirio Diaz, who loved French culture and they started to drink tea more in the European way. And we started drinking tea bags with milk. You could say that we lost the tea leaf tradition at that time. After his thirty-year reign, along with his departure, the habit of drinking tea disappeared. Of course, we always drank something – tea bags, more black tea, but the tradition of whole leaf tea was forgotten for a long time.
– What is the story of your company? How did you make up your mind to start tea business in your region where tea was not popular at all?
– We have been in tea business for 13 years. Our story began with the fact that my husband had minor health problems, and the doctor advised him to stop drinking coffee. He decided to replace it with tea, but the tea he prepared was so tasteless that he decided to find some courses where he, as a consumer, could be taught how to prepare tea. But in Mexico no one could help him with this. Then he found tea sommelier courses in the States and went there with his sister. And there they learned a completely different approach to tea, and when they returned, they decided to start a tea business. Six months later, we started selling teas here, and at the same time looking for suppliers around the world, because we understood that we would not find good tea in Mexico. At first, people came to our store and asked what to drink if you had a stomach or kidney pain, and we patiently explained to everyone what tea was about and how to drink it correctly. And after a year and a half, we began offering tea training to restaurants and hotels, creating our own tea school.
– And what is the situation now?
– Our company has grown a lot. Some restaurants and hotels offer our teas and we train them because that’s the only way to have a very nice cup of tea. But at the consumer level, there are still very few people in Mexico who drink tea. We currently employ 14 people in the company, and we passed B-certification last month. This is a great joy and pride for us because it shows our serious intentions as a company. This B-certificate is given to companies for the quality of interaction with suppliers, for caring for the environment and for the fact that we think not only about profit. And that’s exactly what we’ve been committed to from the very beginning – we’ve tried to be very conscious and contribute to a better life for people in Mexico, while also taking care of the people we buy our tea from, our suppliers.
We teach people to enjoy tea or tisane so that they can differentiate the flavors and enjoy drinking different drinks, instead of just drinking it as a medicine. You can make cocktails from tea, you can turn it into fun! And we are trying to change people attitudes.
– And what is popular in Mexico, what do people drink now?
– Gradually, people are moving from herbs to different teas, they know more about the types of tea, that they can find different taste characteristics. The number of tea companies in the market is growing, especially in the last two years, there has been a sharp increase. Previously, you could only find chamomile, black and green tea, but now there is more variety. You can find various small tea shops, and supermarkets stock the brands Bigelow, Twinnings, Lipton, Dilmah, Harney & sons, Mariage freres, TWG, Teaforte, Dammann, Whittard, etc. Mexican brands make mostly herbal blends but everyday there are more specialized tea shops where you can find whole leaf tea, and different origns to choose your tea.
Green tea is very popular and matcha is becoming a trend. But when people want to try something new, they order oolong teas, as well as flavored teas with added fruits. There are several tea shops that sell bubble tea, this is a very popular trend. But everyone especially loves masala tea, since our cuisine is spicy and we love spices.
– Do you hold any tea championships or conferences?
– Unfortunately we don’t have any tea competitions, at most we have some space at large coffee events. We would really like to hold a TMC, so for next year we will put all our efforts on doing it, we need to gather all the Mexican tea people that want to participate on it and share their experience and skills with all the others. It will take some time, money, energy…but we hope to organise TMC next year!
