LONDON - For centuries, Britain has been characterized by its abysmally dank weather, its oddly refreshing warm beer, its dysfunctional royal families and, perhaps above all, its almost fanatical love for a steaming hot mug of strong black tea.
The weather here still stinks, the beer is still unchilled and Britain's royal family remains energetically unbalanced. The role of traditional black tea in Britain, though, apparently is weakening.
Sharing the headlines here with stories about the Iraq war, North Korean nukes and the disintegration of the European Union has been the news that sales of traditional British teabags fell by 16 percent over the past two years, while loose tea sales dropped 9 percent.
As a headline in The Times of London summed it up: "Coffee and Fizzy Drinks are Now Our Cup of Tea."
"The problem is that young people see tea as something for pensioners and just aren't drinking it," said Amanda Lintott, a spokeswoman for the research group Mintel International, whose report of a weakened tea industry grabbed headlines in virtually all of the country's national newspapers.
"The tea industry really needs to wake up a bit and focus on why they're losing their market. Tea is up against a lot of competition, trendier drinks, but it has held tight to rather a stodgy image."
Younger people, Mintel's study found, are opting for energy drinks, juices and plain old water, which somehow has been transformed from bland to fashionable merely by being put in little plastic bottles.
And, perhaps most sacrilegious to the romantic loyalists of black tea, a fair number of Britons have switched to herbal teas and fruity hot drinks that are marketed as tea, much to the consternation of the "proper" tea industry.
"Those drinks are honorable competitors but you cannot with any truth call them teas," said William Gorman, executive director of the Tea Council, a trade group representing trade producers. "And the real tea is as strong as ever."
He disputes the Mintel report, saying it was based on flawed methodology. Sales of black tea might have leveled off in recent years, he concedes, but the industry remains strong and has begun marketing campaigns targeting younger people.
Tetley Tea, for example, is attempting to warm its appeal through a new spokeswoman, Kim Cattrall, best known for her hyper-caffeinated sex drive as Samantha in the television show Sex and the City.
Slumping sales
