THE ORB HAS SPOKEN: The Crowd Crowns Spiced Chai Queen of the Teapot, and Green Tea Is Left Steeping in the Mist

Gather close, seekers, and look into the bottom of my cup. The leaves have settled into a shape I know well: a crown, dusted with cinnamon, smelling of ginger and clove. The spirits asked which tea style is most popular right now, and before the kettle had even cooled, the crowd answered. Spiced chai takes the throne. Green tea, pure and virtuous, gets to wait in the antechamber.

Now let me pull back the velvet curtain, because the world outside the tent is much murkier than any crystal ball. According to Britannica, about half the world's population drinks tea, and the same encyclopedia calls black tea by far the most common type produced. In China, though, green tea is what people drink most, with black tea in second place. In Britain, a 2023 Tea Group survey of more than two thousand drinkers, reported by Euronews, found that a majority preferred herbal or other alternative teas, and green tea was the favourite alternative. There is no single global ranking anywhere. Popularity changes depending on which country, and which survey, you look at.

Into that fog step the bettors. On Morfi's opinion market, where people put real money behind what they think, "Chai tea" leads at 37% consensus, with "Green tea" chasing at 19%. Also on the ballot: 3 other sides. So far 28 traders have put $206,738 on the table, and the market opened less than a day ago. Notice what the cards leave out: black tea, the giant of world production, isn't the crowd's pick. The question asks what people are drawn to in their own circles, not what fills the shipping containers.

That twist will feel familiar to anyone who read my colleague Chef Basil Brawl's dispatch from an earlier tea brawl, where black tea took the kettle on opening day. Tea crowds are a fickle bunch, darlings. The old builder's brew rules one table, and the spice-scented upstart charms the next.

Here is my own reading, and it is an opinion, not a prophecy etched in stone. Of course chai wins. Masala chai is drama in a mug: smoke, sweetness, heat and milk all in one swirl, a whole caravan of spices packed into a cup. Green tea is the friend who is very good for you and reminds you of it. Wikipedia notes that green, oolong and white teas have come back into fashion in the United States, mostly sold as health foods. But nobody ever fell in love over a wellness claim. People fall in love with cinnamon.

Still, the night is young and the cup is only half drunk. This market isn't even a day old, so watch whether green tea's loyal sippers rally, and whether herbal, the quiet favourite in that British survey, slips out of the shadows. The leaves can rearrange themselves with one stir of the spoon. Think the orb has it wrong? Cross my palm with your conviction and join the market on Morfi before the tea goes cold.