As a protest against British taxation, Samuel Adams and other colonists dumped chests of tea into Boston Harbor in what would come to be known as the Boston Tea Party on Dec. 16, 1773. However, from a beverage perspective, if someone hypothetically tasted the harbor water after the Boston Tea Party, this event could have been viewed as an early experimentation of blending tea and tea flavors in Puget Sound water.
Today, beverage-makers are experimenting with tea and tea flavors in an even wider variety of beverage categories. According to Chicago-based Mintel’s Global New Products Database, the 403 products with tea as an ingredient released between October 2013 and October 2014 spanned beverage categories such as bagged and ready-to-drink (RTD) tea, kombucha, energy drinks and shots, coffee, juices and smoothies, sparkling and enhanced waters, protein drinks and other functional beverages, carbonated soft drinks, liquid concentrates and powdered drink mixes. These releases also represent a 32 percent increase in new product launches containing tea, compared with the 2012-2013 period.