Starting this week, Toronto and Vancouver can easily get a taste of one of China's most beloved drinks.
With two of the largest Chinese populations outside of China, Starbucks locations in these cities are currently offering a blossoming peach tea latte to celebrate Chinese New Year. The latte, inspired by a popular beverage from China, is a blend of earl grey and peach-flavoured tea, topped with whipped cream and peach blossom sugar crystals.
Traditionally, tea is offered to seniors in a household by younger generations on the first day of the New Year. And while tea ceremonies are custom for major holidays or events like weddings, tea often symbolizes prosperity and good luck.
An NPD survey found that not only is Canada one of the world's biggest coffee markets (drinking 2 billion servings of coffee last year), our tastes also veer towards tea when the time calls for it. Last year, Canadians consumed 372 million servings of hot tea.
And the benefits of drinking teas in general are endless. If you make your own tea at home or limit sugar packets and whipped cream, green tea for example improves bone health, hydrates your body and could also help reduce your signs of heart attack, according to Greatist.com.
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