The article is devoted to the problem of eco-geographical, socio-economic and socio-political factors of distribution of the tea subculture in various societies. As a result of the study, the author concluded that consumption of tea is a concomitant of a social structure that corresponds to liberal types of economic systems or to more archaic authoritarian regimes, or a combination of them (as in the case of China). This suggests that these societies encourage and distribute the tea subculture either as a result of the influence of the metropolises (Kenya and Nigeria), or patrimonial authoritarian regimes, or are on the agrarian or industrial developmental stage. In general, the promotion of a conservative type of development of society with traditional technologies and belated modernization corresponds to high rates of tea consumption. Transitional (transitory) societies with multiple social identities (which takes place either through multi-ethnicity, multi-confessionality, multiculturalism, consociality, etc.) also tend to increase the consumption of tea. At the same time, in the dissemination of the tea subculture, the researcher must also take into account a number of climatic, geographic and environmental factors, in particular: the permissibility / unresolved food problem; availability / unavailability of sources of drinking water of physiologically minimal utility; aridity / humidity of the climate. Socio-economic factors in the distribution of the tea subculture include harvesting and forced modernization, while maintaining archaic political institutions; high rates of social polarity / inequalities, from which the lower classes stratified the morality of intolerance towards dependents; significant discrepancies in the standard of living of territorial communities that were formed on the colonial periphery; an insignificant place of the middle class in the social structure, accompanying the inequality of material and financial and educational capital.