The first cup of tea is for your enemies, the second for your wife and the third for you, says a Chinese proverb. But that is in the Asian country, whose variety admits several infusions and improves – it is assumed – with each one of them. In contemporary Britain, because of the rush and instant satisfaction, the usual thing is to heat water in the kettle and add a bag. The law of least effort.

But now, due to the situation in the Red Sea, the Houthi attacks on commercial ships and the impact on supplies (going around the Cape of Good Hope instead of crossing the Suez Canal means a delay of about twelve days ), the British run the risk of running out of tea, not just for their enemies, but even for themselves. It has already disappeared from the shelves of some supermarkets, like toilet paper at the beginning of the pandemic, and the two main brands that sell it in the country, Tetley and Yorkshire, have warned, so as not to spread alarm, that “they continue the situation very closely.” “Keep calm, shopkeepers suggest,” headlined The Sun newspaper the other day.

But the alarm has spread, because tea is part of the British culture, soul and identity, to the point that one hundred million cups are consumed a year, an average of two a day per adult. Whether it’s because it’s raining and the weather is miserable, or to wake you up, or as a consolation if you’ve had a fight at work, your partner has left you, your soccer team has lost, or the kids are unbearable. It’s the emergency exit.

Tea arrived in the mid-17th century, when Dutch traders began bringing it to these islands from the rest of Europe and China. Very expensive at first, like all exotic products, it became a favorite of aristocrats and the wealthy classes, until it became popular and became available to everyone. Today it is like an educated and healthy addiction, and most of it is imported from sub-Saharan Africa, Asia and Oceania.

The prospect of running out of tea is too painful for Britons to sit idly by, and all sorts of theories about what to do in an emergency are circulating on social media. Some recommend not throwing away the bags and using them several times (although the quality is getting worse, unlike the Chinese variety). Others, recover those that have been brought as souvenirs from trips abroad, and lie at the back of the cupboard. Some boil the expired leaves in milk and add ginger, cinnamon, cloves, cardamom and sugar to turn them into an appetizing chai. And certainly not to despise varieties like South African rooibos, even if they are not native, are too perfumed for certain palates and have little caffeine.

But to great evils, great remedies, and the truly revolutionary alternative, reached an extreme, would be to change tea for coffee, which has been creating an increasingly larger niche in the British market for several decades, ever since North American chains appeared. like Starbucks (98 million cups are consumed, only two million less than the national drink, and twice as much is spent on it, because it is more expensive). Many discovered cappuccino in the late 90s, as part of Tony Blair’s Cool Britannia, and now they can’t live without it. Although for tourists tradition rules, and going to the Ritz to have a decaffeinated coffee from a machine, in a glass, with hot milk, is not the same…

To a large extent it is a generational thing, the older ones prefer tea and the younger ones coffee, although wanting one thing does not mean having to give up the other. The first is identified with the comfort, the cosiness, the routine, the warmth of a home’s kitchen. The second, with the exotic, the cosmopolitan, the metrosexual, with a little indiscreet adventure, a trip to the street even if it is to work or play with the computer.

What is clear is that this country takes tea very seriously, that no one touches it, and even less does it make cultural appropriation. An American professor said the aberration that it should be taken with a pinch of salt, and Washington had to officially apologize.