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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. | 
