Who are Europe’s top tea and coffee drinkers?
If you thought it was the British and the Italians, think again.
“In terms of general coffee drinking, Northern Europe is the most important market: The Finns drink a huge quantity of coffee,” Giacomo Biviano, head of the European, Middle Eastern and African markets for Italian espresso maker Illy, told the German Press Agency (DPA).
Among Europe’s tea fanatics, meanwhile, Britain comes a humble third, behind Ireland and world champion tea-drinker Turkey, and not far above Russia and Poland, said Michiel Leijnse, global marketing manager at the Lipton tea company, a subsidiary of leading multinational Unilever.
Indeed, when it comes to hot drinks, you could argue that variety is Europe’s leading feature.
The continent’s biggest coffee drinkers are the Finns, who consume up to 12kg of coffee per year — the highest rate in the world, double that of Italy. Norwegians and Danes are not far behind.
But the Nordic nations tend to prefer relatively weak, drip-brewed coffee, while Mediterranean countries are far more partial to the concentrated impact of espresso, Biviano said.
In Italy, for example, espresso is by far the dominant form of coffee consumed: Italians drink around 14 billion espressos per year.
Milky blends such as the cappuccino and latte make up just one-fifth of Italian consumption, “because Italians only drink cappuccino at breakfast,” Biviano said.
In Northern Europe, by contrast, the ratio is reversed: Milk blends sell four times as well as espresso shots, according to Illy’s research.
That might suggest that North Europeans prefer weaker hot drinks. But curiously enough, if coffee starts strong in the south and weakens as you travel north, tea goes in the other direction.
“A typical tea bag for the British market would contain 3 grams of tea, in France the same bag would hold 2 grams, and in Italy it’s 1.5 grams,” Leijnse said.
That, again, is largely because of milk: British and Irish drinkers regularly take it in their tea, while in southern and eastern countries such as Italy, Russia and Turkey, it is more often drunk with lemon, or unadulterated.
And while traditional tea-drinking nations such as Britain and Russia prefer black tea, tea drinkers in traditional coffee nations are far more willing to experiment.
“In Russia and Britain, flavored teas make up a small percentage of total sales. But in France, they’re less focused on black tea because tea is more often drunk at 4 o’clock with pastries, so there’s a larger variety of flavors and infusions: We even have four different types of Earl Grey in France,” Leijnse said.
Companies from both sides of the hot-drink divide are now moving in to one another’s markets: Illy recently took over French tea firm Dammann Freres, while British tea company Twining’s is now marketing its own coffee blends.
And with drinking habits evolving ever faster in the melting pot — or coffee pot — of globalization, it looks as if variety, more than anything else, is now Europe’s cup of tea.
Kehinde Sanni spends his days smoothing out dents and repainting scratched bumpers in a modest autobody shop in Lagos. He has never left Nigeria, yet he speaks glowingly of Burkina Faso military leader Ibrahim Traore. “Nigeria needs someone like Ibrahim Traore of Burkina Faso. He is doing well for his country,” Sanni said. His admiration is shaped by a steady stream of viral videos, memes and social media posts — many misleading or outright false — portraying Traore as a fearless reformer who defied Western powers and reclaimed his country’s dignity. The Burkinabe strongman swept into power following a coup in September 2022
‘FRAGMENTING’: British politics have for a long time been dominated by the Labor Party and the Tories, but polls suggest that Reform now poses a significant challenge Hard-right upstarts Reform UK snatched a parliamentary seat from British Prime Minister Keir Starmer’s Labor Party yesterday in local elections that dealt a blow to the UK’s two establishment parties. Reform, led by anti-immigrant firebrand Nigel Farage, won the by-election in Runcorn and Helsby in northwest England by just six votes, as it picked up gains in other localities, including one mayoralty. The group’s strong showing continues momentum it built up at last year’s general election and appears to confirm a trend that the UK is entering an era of multi-party politics. “For the movement, for the party it’s a very, very big
ENTERTAINMENT: Rio officials have a history of organizing massive concerts on Copacabana Beach, with Madonna’s show drawing about 1.6 million fans last year Lady Gaga on Saturday night gave a free concert in front of 2 million fans who poured onto Copacabana Beach in Rio de Janeiro for the biggest show of her career. “Tonight, we’re making history... Thank you for making history with me,” Lady Gaga told a screaming crowd. The Mother Monster, as she is known, started the show at about 10:10pm local time with her 2011 song Bloody Mary. Cries of joy rose from the tightly packed fans who sang and danced shoulder-to-shoulder on the vast stretch of sand. Concert organizers said 2.1 million people attended the show. Lady Gaga
SUPPORT: The Australian prime minister promised to back Kyiv against Russia’s invasion, saying: ‘That’s my government’s position. It was yesterday. It still is’ Left-leaning Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese yesterday basked in his landslide election win, promising a “disciplined, orderly” government to confront cost-of-living pain and tariff turmoil. People clapped as the 62-year-old and his fiancee, Jodie Haydon, who visited his old inner Sydney haunt, Cafe Italia, surrounded by a crowd of jostling photographers and journalists. Albanese’s Labor Party is on course to win at least 83 seats in the 150-member parliament, partial results showed. Opposition leader Peter Dutton’s conservative Liberal-National coalition had just 38 seats, and other parties 12. Another 17 seats were still in doubt. “We will be a disciplined, orderly
RSS