Lipton tea in mainstream US stores has always suffered by comparison to the English brands. (Tea-drinking is relatively uncommon in the US.) If they even have

Lipton tea in mainstream US stores has always suffered by comparison to the English brands. (Tea-drinking is relatively uncommon in the US.) If they even have any, many US restaurants will often serve tea that's obviously been open-to-the-atmosphere for a long time. They just don't know any better. In the northern US, we could border-cross to buy Canadian teabags which were far better than US bags ... owing, no doubt, to the number of Canadians of UK-extraction. (Which may also explain why most Canadian beer is better.)