Tea Blog

When it comes to offbeat Beatles-related merchandise, Beatles hair spray has to rank pretty high on the list. But of course this site is all about tea, and so it’s only fitting that we make reference to a few tea-themed items. There’s a Yellow Submarine tea infuser, for example.

To top that, one well-known tea company came up with a tea they call Beatles’ Blend. Though their web site no longer lists it as being available and doesn’t indicate what it had to do with the Fab Four, another source offers the original description for the blend, “A classic twist on Earl Grey black tea, Beatles Blend black tea hearkens back to the roots of the Beatles’ homeland. We start with traditional Earl Grey, and then add in a rich, malty tea from China, reminiscent of an English Breakfast tea. We balance the blend with an Indian tea that speaks to the Beatles’ avid fascination with and travels to India. Finally, we top it off with a twist of jasmine culminating in a blend destined to become a star.”

To go even one step better than that, a New York-based tea house came up with a special Peace & Love Tea a few years back to commemorate the observance of Ringo Starr’s seventieth birthday (feeling old, Beatles fans?).

To judge by their songs, tea was indeed one of the Beatles favorite drinks. As one might rightly have suspected, given that they were a quartet of British lads, after all. According to Martin Lewis, who claims to be one of the world’s leading Beatles historians, references to tea turned up in more than a dozen Beatles songs, including five that were recorded during one three-month period in 1967 alone.

References to tea in Beatles songs even turned up in the post-Beatles years and one of the most notable of these was Paul McCartney’s (that’s Sir Paul to you) 2005 track, English Tea, which was a tribute to…that’s right. As for John Lennon, some decades after his death his widow wrote in a New York Times piece about his tea prep and drinking habits and discussed the questions they had over whether the tea bags should go in before the hot water or vice versa.

If there is still any doubt that the Beatles were a proper bunch of tea-drinking British lads, then let the photographic evidence on this page be the final word. After all, fifty-plus photos of one or more Beatles drinking tea makes a pretty good case.

See more of William I. Lengeman’s articles here.

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