Tea is a Goth Thing Now

It's Black Friday made a YouTube video recently discussing tea and it's associations with the Goth scene and speculations as to why tea is suddenly so much more popular. She is a relatively new Goth YouTuber, but I freakin' love her and her stuff! You can see the video here.

Now, as a tea drinker I just wanted to add my two cents and personal opinion to the topic. Hope you enjoy!

I pretty much agree with everything she states, and we have the same tea preference.

She is living in New Zealand, and while that is a different country to the one I live in, there are quite a few cultural similarities. Tea, particularly black tea served with milk, is something my parents have both always drunk, and it was natural that I started drinking it pretty much since I was a teenager. My sister doesn't like it, but my brother is starting to like it. Both of my parents, my grandparents, and myself, can hardly function in the morning without a cup of hot tea and always drink it during the 'social daylight hours'...
I think tea really was largely a rural thing in Australia until quite recently. While some people living in the city have drunk tea for a long time, in the country everyone drinks it. Well, almost everyone.
Companies such as T2 made 'fancy' and trendy varieties of tea readily available in the cities, but plain old black tea was something always drunk in the country, which is where I spent quite a lot of my life growing up. I'll always be a city person at heart, but I do love the country for different reasons. Coffee is still The Drink in Melbourne, and Melbourne is one of the biggest drinkers of coffee in the world.

Source: Tumblr

As for tea being a Goth thing, I feel that tea's popularity in Goth culture is also because it is something that was popular, elegant and social throughout history, particularly in the Victorian period. Also, relative to coffee, at least in this country, hot tea is still less mainstream than coffee or iced tea, although with the recent popularity of hipsters that possibly has changed. I don't know exactly, nor do I care.

With a few exceptions, whenever I go out I almost never buy a cup of tea. This is pretty much because 9 out of 10 times it is from a crappy tea bag (I prefer loose leaf), and is over $3. I can make a far better cup of tea at home any day. But, hot coffee made by a professional barista is something that I cannot make at home, at least to the same degree as I don't have one of those fancy, expensive coffee machines. I have ordered tea once, at the Sofitel which is a 5 star hotel. Needless to say, I wasn't paying. I can't afford to buy drinks in hotels. But still, the tea was premium quality, loose lead, and tasted amazing.

As previously stated, my personal preference for everyday is black tea, served hot with milk and absolutely no sugar. I really really dislike too- sweet drinks. And while I will have sweet drinks occasionally, such as a hot chocolate or juice, I tend to prefer a fruit based sweet flavour. I tend to not like drinks with buckets of added sugar.
I also adore flavoured black teas. I adore Chai tea and anything with chilli or other spices. Recently I also tried tea with rose flavour. The flavour was slightly perfume-y, which is something that I don't like but I realised that I would love black tea with natural rose flavour or real rose. (Sweet Rose is a scent that I have been absolutely in love with lately, specifically not too floral.) I am particularly fascinated with chocolate and other warm notes. I think Chocolate Chai with Chilli and Rose would be my ideal tea, hypothetically.
I quite like many herbal infusions. Peppermint is a favourite, and I am sure that doesn't surprise anyone. I also enjoy SleepyTime Tea, which is the only herbal infusion by Celestial Seasonings that I can find here. I know they sell an Autumn flavoured tea which sounds heavenly. I love lemon and honey, either from a tea bag or made from scratch. Occasionally I will have a fruit based herbal tea, particularly with berries.

So there's my personal love for tea, and my general extra comments on the topic of tea being a Goth thing. Thanks for reading, and I will have another post soon!

xxx Lilly