AS ANY foreigner can tell you, Americans love their coffee. It is a watered-down percolation compared with the eye-twitchingly strong varieties sold in little thimbles in many European cafés, but it is coffee nonetheless. A decent cup of tea, however, has been harder to find, though that is about to change.

With a shop on what seems like every urban corner, Starbucks is such a fixture in American life that you gauge a neighbourhood by how near you are to one of its coffee houses. Yet when it first started operating in 1971 it was known as "Starbucks Coffee, Tea and Spice". In those very early days, 27 different kinds of loose-leaf teas were scooped from its store at Pike Place Market in Seattle. As it expanded it focused on coffee, retaining only a small offering of tea behind its counters.

Times were tough for tea aficionados parching for their favourite cuppa during the coffee boom, until 1997, when Teavana opened its first premises in Atlanta. It quickly grew, eventually selling a wide range of fine teas and tea paraphernalia in its 300 locations, though it mostly sells loose-leaf tea (you can also get a brew if you are prepared to wait). Then in 2003 Argo Tea was founded in an up-market neighbourhood in Chicago and is to tea what Starbucks is to coffee. Dotted around the country its stores are temples for tea drinkers, even carrying tea-flavoured food.

Tea is the second-most popular beverage in the world, after water. But most Americans still prefer to drink it iced, in many varieties, and have so far taken a different approach to hot tea. Coffee is part of the morning ritual to get going, iced tea is consumed with lunch, and in the evening botanicals and infusions, such as camomile, are drunk. Loose-leaf teas, so familiar in much of the the rest of the world, have not been that popular since 324 tea chests were dumped into Boston harbour in 1773.

But tastes change and interest in drinking hot tea is rising. Last year Starbucks paid $620m for Teavana and together they plan to take on the $90 billion "global hot and iced-tea category". Starbucks is opening its first Teavana-branded tea house that will sell hot tea (but no coffee) on October 24th, in New York’s Upper East Side. Cliff Burrows, the group president of Starbucks, thinks that buying Teavana will help it tap the growing market for drinking tea in many flavours and varieties. One reason for the brewing interest is that the younger generation, the millennials, have travelled to more exotic climes and discovered the world's favourite drink.

Like coffee and chocolate, teas have a rich history and background that the new stores will capitalise on. Mr Burrows was drinking a monkey-picked oolong as we spoke over the phone. (Starbucks has also come up with several other rather whizzy modern interpretations of tea, such as sparkling silver-needle iced tea and sparkling golden monkey.) Argo has done well selling hot tea to drink, but Starbucks is a force to be reckoned with. At the end of the year, when a second Starbucks tea house opens, in Seattle, it will become clearer whether Americans are ready to fall in love with tea again. And to give a (kind of) definitive ruling on the subject, Starbucks’s Mr Burrows thinks those who use milk in their tea should put it in after the tea has been poured into the cup, not before.

正如任何外国人可以告诉你的一样，美国人热爱咖啡。相比欧洲咖啡馆里可以令人眼花缭乱各式各样的小包装，美国的咖啡是用水稀释的滤煮法，不过这也是咖啡。然而，人们很难找到像样的一杯茶，但这种情况即将改变。

美国式生活就是你永远可以在城市的角落找到一家星巴克，你所在的街区距离星巴克有多远可以衡量这个街区有多美国化。然而，1971年开张的时候，星巴克的店名却是“星巴克咖啡、茶和香料”，早期在西雅图的派克市场出售27种不同的散装茶叶。随着买卖的扩大，星巴克专注于咖啡，出售的产品中，茶只占据很少的一部分。

在咖啡热潮期间，茶叶爱好者很难喝到喜欢的茶。这种情况一直直持续到1997年，Teavana在亚特兰大创办了第一家直营店。它迅速发展并拥有300家店铺，出售多品种的优质茶叶以及品茶用具，尽管其中大部分还是散装茶叶（如果等候也可以烹茶）。2003年，Argo Tea茶馆在芝加哥的高档街区开店，成为茶馆界的星巴克。其店铺散布于全国各地，是茶爱好者的圣地，这些茶爱好者们甚至拿着茶味食品。

茶是世界第二受欢迎的饮料，仅次于白水。但是大多数美国人仍然更喜欢喝各种冰镇茶饮，他们热茶的方式也各不相同。早晨需要咖啡作为一天的开始，午餐时喝冰镇茶饮，晚上则沏植物茶，比如甘菊。散装茶叶在世界的大部分地区都很流行，在美国却不是这样，因为1773年，324箱茶叶被倒入波士顿港。

但是美国人的口味在变化，喝热茶的兴趣正在上升。2012年星巴克以6.2亿美元收购了Teavana，并一起进行900亿美元的“全球热茶及冰茶类别”计划。星巴克于10月24日开设第一家Teavana品牌茶馆，在纽约上东区销售热茶（不售咖啡）。星巴克总裁克里夫-巴罗斯认为收购Teavana有助于其不断开拓市场，提供不同味道和种类的茶饮。这么做是有利可图的，因为年轻的一代（千禧一代）旅行经历过奇特的气候并且发现世界上最受喜爱的饮料。

像咖啡和巧克力一样，茶有着深厚的历史和背景，可为新店所用。与我们做电话采访时，巴罗斯先生喝着猴子采摘的乌龙茶。（星巴克也推出了一些诠释现代意义的茶饮，比如银针冰茶以及闪亮金猴。Argo的热饮卖的很好，但是星巴克在热饮方面已经做得相当不错。2013年年末，第二个星巴克茶馆将在西雅图运营，美国人是否可以再次爱上茶饮这个问题也会变得更加清晰。如果要给这个问题一个（种）明确的规定，星巴克的巴罗斯认为如果做奶茶，应该先沏好茶，再加入牛奶，而不是在沏茶之前放牛奶。