Why Do Russians Drink More Tea Than Coffee?
Channel: TAJ coffee
Date: 2019-09-16

-Despite the fact that the Russians were mainly “tea-drinkers”, coffee gained more and more favour as time went on.
-Nowadays it is quite popular, and below there are some interesting coffee statistics in Russia as of 2012:
• 2/3 of all Russian coffee-drinkers are citizens of Moscow and St. Petersburg
• St. Petersburg citizens drink 1 or 2 cups of coffee daily and are jokingly called “coffee pots”. Moscow citizens are “tea pots”, as they tend to drink more tea
• about 85% of Russians prefer instant coffee to coffee beans
• every year the number of fresh coffee drinkers in Russia goes up, the number of instant coffee drinkers goes down
• cappuccino is the most popular drink in Russian coffee houses
• at home Russians mostly brew coffee in Turkish brewing pots called jezves, in Moka pots or coffee plungers and like to add some milk, cream, spices, chocolate, berries, lemon, liqueur, etc.
• up to 100% of coffee in Russia is imported. The main suppliers are Vietnam, Brazil, Indonesia.

-Coffee... In the morning its flavour is in the air of the cities. According to statistics, some 760 billion cups of coffee every year are consumed by people from all over the world. Available to a limited number of people – the well off – one or two centuries ago, today it is pleasure of everyone and an integral part of our lives.
-There is a wide range of ways to brew and serve coffee in the world, some of them exist more than nine centuries, and new ones are coming up.

**“Tea is sacred for Russians,” you might think. Indeed, Russians love tea and always drink it. According to a 2014 poll, 94 percent of Russians drink tea. 
-Famous author Leo Tolstoy used to say: “I needed to drink much tea for I can’t work without it. Tea awakens those opportunities that dream deep inside my soul.”

Russians preference for tea:

Tea nation:
• Unlike Napoleon or Hitler, tea successfully ‘invaded’ Russia and conquered the country for good. As with most other countries, tea was originally imported from China, but when exactly?
• The 19th-century scholar, Dmitry Prozorovsky, wrote that Russia’s envoy to China in 1654 had mentioned it as “a common thing,” adding that, “Tea is one of the main necessities for a modern-day person.”
• “By the middle of the 19th century, all social strata, from nobles to the poorest peasants, were drinking tea,” historian Alexey Volynets wrote in an article for Russian Planet.
• Even Nicholas I, Russia’s severe tsar from 1825 to 1855, ordered to serve imprisoned revolutionaries “with tea,” because not doing so would be inhumane.
• In 2016, research conducted by Euromonitor International showed that 78 percent of Russians chose tea in a binary “tea-or-coffee” contest. (In the U.S. the 'coffee party' won with 75 percent

All Kinds of tea lovers:

The tsar
-Alexander I, who reigned from to 1801 to 1825,  made tea affordable in restaurants and in city markets. He enjoyed the drink, with courtiers reporting that he always “starts his day with green tea and cream, with toast.”
The revolutionary
-Vladimir Lenin, the architect of the October Revolution in 1917, also enjoyed tea. Many memoirs by revolutionaries of that period begin with Lenin drinking tea with his comrades. “During his time in exile abroad, as well as after it, he drank beer or wine from time to time, but never was a fan,” Sovsekretno.ru wrote.
The totalitarian leader
Joseph Stalin, the most controversial ruler in Russian history, also had some common human features – a love for tea, for example. Marshal Alexander Vasilevsky recalled: “Usually during meetings his assistant brings him a glass of tea with lemon… Stalin squeezes the lemon into the tea, adds some cognac and drinks the tea sip by sip…”


What’s up with lemon?
• Stalin wasn’t the only one to enjoy lemon in his tea, and this habit is specifically Russian. 
• "No one does that anywhere else,” Svetlana Ustyugova, an expert on Russian dessert, told AiF. “The tradition appeared at post stations (in the 18th – 19th centuries) when travelers were changing horses. 
• Roads were poor, so they often had motion sickness. Something sour helps in this case, and so they were offered tea (to warm up) with lemon (to feel better).”
• In addition, in a cold country such as Russia, it's important to have foods with vitamin C. Not all Russians, however, prefer tea with lemon.