Tea Talk with Bruce Richardson — EnChanTEA Podcast E02

Introduction & Bruce’s Tea Journey

00:00:09 Christy Hui:
what an honor to have you on the show today, Bruce

00:00:12 Bruce Richardson:
Well, it’s, it’s always a delight to talk tea with, another devotee.

00:00:16 Christy Hui:
Yeah. Yes, I’ve had the privilege of interviewing you numerous times. And what a marvelous experience we had together, and I wanna take this opportunity to share some of those magical tea moments with our audience.

Sure, sure. So as tea historian, author of many tea books, including A Social History of Tea, and many others, and owner of Elmwood Fine Teas, we have a lot to discuss. Sure. So let’s dive in Glad to… my wonderful Bruce, tea master. Can you please do me the honor of briefly introducing yourself to our audience?

How did you begin your tea journey?

00:01:03 Bruce Richardson:
Well, it’s a long tea journey. It’s, almost have to go back to having been raised on a farm, which… and here in Kentucky, which gave me roots in the soil. And so now when I go around the world meeting tea farmers, I would say it’s just two farm boys talking to each other.

We’re, we, we know soil, we know plants, we know terroir, we know all those things. We know growing seasons. And so that was a great introduction for me. I didn’t know that as a small boy who left the farm at age 11, but that was, that was literally the root of, of my tea journey, starting there. And then, different things that happened throughout my life that, that, brought me to the world of tea.

But first we went through, you know, 22 years of being a classical musician and, and singer and conductor, and so I did all that. And still, that was part of my, my tea journey as well, because that brought me to, to England where I discovered, the English ritual of tea, which then we brought back to Kentucky and started the tea house in 1990- Ah

when nobody was doing tea in America. And that was the beginning of the tea renaissance, which now has just grown exponentially here in the United States and across the world. Did the Queen of England ever come to Kentucky for like our Kentucky Derby? Yes, she did. She came twice. And, she had, she had horses, she boarded horses here.

And- Wow… she would come to visit her, her horses sometimes, and, once came to the Kentucky Derby, and caused, you know, quite an uproar. To everybody wanted to see- Of course. Now, so did she grace your tea house? No. No, but she ca- that was, not in the time that I had a, had a, uh, a tearoom, so I, I, never got to welcome her into my, into my tea house.

Although the, in 2002, the, British Tea Association, awarded us with, the very first North American tearoom to be recognized by the, by the British Tea Council, so that was, uh, that was a big, a big honor for us. But, you know, we had to put that tearoom away in, in, 2004, after 14 years, in order to continue our wholesale, importing and blending business, and that’s really what, what drives the ship these days.

Mm-hmm. Now, I’m gonna switch gear a little bit, but I’m gonna circle back to your, tea shop business later on. Mm-hmm. I’m gonna first talk about the tea master.

The Boston Tea Party Ships & Museum

00:03:31 Bruce Richardson:
You are the tea master for the Boston Tea Party Ships and Museum. Yes. How do you fulfill that role? What do you do? Well, and we just finished a major production in Boston.

Uh, we s- started the museum nearly 12 or 13 years ago, and this is the museum that is in the center of Boston, rises up out of Boston Harbor, and it interprets the, the event that happened on December 16th, 1773. Then this past year was the 250th anniversary of that event, and so we cel- we spent a year preparing for that, and even going to London in order to, to launch the celebration, back in the fall.

And then on December 16th, in Boston, we had nearly 15,000 people who surrounded the, the Ships, Museum. Uh, we had, dignitaries there from all over the world, and we had a reenactment with, costumed, interpreters and lights, camera, action, all of it, to, to recreate, the Boston Tea Party with 1,000 pounds of tea going overboard, into Boston Harbor that night.

So my, my main role there is to bring tea to the forefront, to say, “This is the story of tea. This is how it got here.” Uh, and that’s how you and I met, was, was- Yeah… talking about how the, the tea came from China to London- Mm-hmm… and then to, on its way to Boston. And, and

How Tea Came from China to the West

00:04:57 Bruce Richardson:
a lot of people don’t know that the tea that went into Boston Harbor all came from China, because that was the only place really that was exporting tea at the time.

Yeah, and I find it fascinating that until I made the tea movie, I did not know that two-thirds of those teas came from Wuyi Mountains. Yes, yes, Wuyi and, and the, and the Songluo Mountains, both there, and Fujian- Yes… were so important. Fujian, yes. They’re so important. And, and but every chest of tea came from China.

Right, right. And so that, you know, a lot of people didn’t realize that and they thought that, oh, maybe they came from India. No, early days, all the- Mm… teas came from China. It is- And-… and that’s, that’s one thing that people don’t know. There was no tea in India. Uh- Mm-hmm… tea wouldn’t be discovered in India until, until 1834- Mm-hmm

up in Assam And then it was, it was propagated and, and planted all over India after that. There was no tea from Sri Lanka. Tea hasn’t even been, hadn’t even been planted in Sri Lanka- Yeah… until after our American Civil War. Yeah. And Japan was not open to, to export, so it all came from China for, for hundreds of years.

And we tracked down the entire story, and thanks to you appearing in the movie and explaining the greatest kept secret, Chinese tea making. So you know, that I just… What a story. It was quite a story. I mean- I was, you know, every- I was back in, every time I was… I was back in Boston three times last year, and back in the, Old South Meeting House where you and I- Mm-hmm

filmed that day. And, every time I go in there, I just, just, it’s an honor to, to be in the, almost a, a hallowed, hallowed hall there. Yeah, yeah. And you suggested that, so I, am forever indebted to you for how that whole thing came together. And again, I think I talk about the magical spirit of tea, and I think tea has…

You almost have to be called to be on your tea journey It’s a vocation Yeah. Yes Yeah, it’s a vocation of- It, it’s, it’s a- So-… it’s a meaningful connection to tea It is. And that’s- And-… that’s, that’s what we have always thought, that it is v- it’s a calling Mm-hmm Uh, and you don’t always know it until maybe after you’ve been down the road a while- Yeah

and you look back and, and you say, “Oh, y- yes, I’ve been on this road for quite a while.” Yes, this is- I th- didn’t even realize it, you know… yeah, this is the tea trail. Oh, I’ve been on a tea trail. Yeah, right And, Yeah You know, when I was filming at the tea party, the Ship’s N Museum, it was so nice to be able to taste a cup of Lapsang Souchong- Mm-hmm

which is the origin of black tea that started to migrate tea into the West. Mm-hmm And you had something to do with it, didn’t you, Bruce? What, of the, of the, The tasting… tasting The different types of blue t- black tea- Yes… offered at the museum. Right. So I, I furnish all the tea to the museum. So when you go to the museum today, in Abigail’s tea room, you can taste the five teas that were tossed overboard in Boston Harbor.

Now, I have to tell you, these teas are much better than the original teas that went into Boston Harbor. Yes. And I s- often say that the great offense that George III, cast upon our citizenry was trying to offload stale and, and- Yes… outdated tea into the colonies. It was just, it was, it was just atrocious.

And so the teas we have today are, are, are fresh. They’re, they’re less than a year old, and, and, the quality is so much better than what would have been drunk there in Boston or in England, Yeah… in the 1700s. You know, we talked about that in the tea film, that, how Lapsang Souchong was an accidental invention in China.

Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm And, and ac- in Wuyishan, actually, we traced that journey, right? But actually, it was, first of all, it was the tea that the Chinese rejected. Right. It was tainted. Yes. Yeah It was too dark. We don’t want it. It was too smoky. But let’s sell it to the Westerners. They don’t know what they’re- Let’s sell it to the Westerners

they don’t know what they’re drinking Exactly. Um, so another thing I think that was really wonderful as I was walking around the museum that day after filming- One of the art panels really caught my attention. Mm-hmm. And it was, um, the mystery of Monkey Picked tea. Tell me, Bruce,

Tea Legends: Monkey Picked & Orange Pekoe

00:09:32 Bruce Richardson:
did monkeys really picked the tea?

Well, uh, one of my favorite stories is, telling that I got a call once from m- from MTV. They were doing some kind of, of-… broadcast on tea for some reason. And so they wanted to know, they were trying to do, teas that, that men might want to drink. And, and so one of the teas they pointed out was Monkey Picked tea.

And they said, “How, how do they go about making this Monkey Picked tea?” I said, “You’re not the first Westerner-… to fall for that,” because they used to tell the, the buyers in Canton would tell both the Dutch and the English, “Well, we’re charging you so much for this tea because we had to s- train monkeys to go up into the tea trees-

and pick that tea and bring it back down and hand it to us so that we could pack it away for you. And so that just adds a lot of, price to-… the tea that we’re about to sell to you.” And they would go, “Well, we’ll pay whatever you want to, want, ask for this tea.” And so they call it, we call it Monkey Picked tea.

And, of course, there was no such thing and, but we still use the term Monkey Picked. So- Fun… any, if you go into any tea, seller, in, in Chinatown and say, “I, I want your best, I want your best Monkey Picked tea,” they’ll know, they know well you want the best, the very best tea. and so-… it’s just a term we use now to talk about, the very best tea that we might offer.

You know, back in those days, there’s no advertising, right? I mean, we don’t even- I mean, the culture of barriers, the language barrier- Yes… alone. So how do you even sell all the tea in China? How do you distinguish it, right? I mean, it’s a classic marketing- Mm… issue. And so, you know, it’s a great ploy, so Well, and, and that, that term all the tea in China, we ha- those in the West have no idea what they’re saying when they say that.

‘Cause you’ve been there, and you know that every time you go over a hill, somebody’s making tea in a different way than the person on the other side of the hill. Mm-hmm. So we’ve cataloged over 2,000 different teas in China, but that’s just a portion of them. Because every time you meet a new tea maker, they’re making tea in a different fashion or with a different cultivar.

And so, when you say all the tea in China, it’s, it’s unlimited how much you’re- Yes… you’re talking about. Yeah, I mean, even on Wuyishan alone, where it’s the origin of Lapsang souchong, the black tea, and oolong, I mean, there are hundreds of varietals of oolong alone. Mm-hmm. So in, in that mountain region, I just one can imagine just, just to track all of that.

And in the 1500s, in the 1600s, when speaking, there’s no common language. There’s no common language, right. Nobody was writing this down. Right… no. No. And I love the fact that there is so… You know, when we research about tea, the corruption, the terms- Mm-hmm… the tea terms that, that came about, right, Bruce?

Right. Even, even what’s one of my favorite was the Orange Pekoe, how it become Orange Pekoe. I, I, I’ve written about that hundreds of times. Um, and still people have no idea what that is. And I once wrote, uh, a story that said, uh, the title was Waiter, There’s No Orange in My Orange Pekoe Tea. You know, I wanna send this back.

The, the thing is that the, the word pekoe is, uh, the, the word for the, the little cilia on the, on your ear, or it’s also the little cilia on the white tea bud. And th- that word is pekoe. And then the word- Orange is actually the House of Orange, the Dutch monarchy. So, uh, my conjecture is that the Dutch East India Company bought this tea and, and to bring it home, and, uh, they paid a lot for it.

And this is a new tea, which they just knew the name of it was pekoe. And they said, “Well, how are we gonna sell this?” And somebody said, “Well, let’s give a chest of it to the king and name it after him, and we’ll call it Orange Pekoe.” And so that name Orange Pekoe has stayed with us over the years. It… And of course, it has made a circuitous rou- round to now where we use it in the grading system.

So all the grades of tea from Sri Lanka or China, or from India, use the term, O orange, P pekoe, OP. FOP is flowery Orange Pekoe, BOP is broken Orange Pekoe, and so on. So that’s, that’s how we keep it going. Yeah, I find it fascinating because I speak Chinese, so when I first read about Orange Pekoe, and I’m trying to Correlate that to Chinese Mm-hmm So then it was through sound.

They’re like, “Oh my goodness, it’s pah-ho.” Mm-hmm. Ah, yes. Ho. Right, right, right. Yep, pah-ho Right And, so yes, it’s the house, the, the royal house is the orange in, in Dutch- Mm-hmm… in the Netherlands. Mm-hmm. So therefore, naturally it’s the royal tea because back then tea was so expensive that only the royalties and the aro- and the high class- Could afford it

elites drink it. Exactly. So- Yeah… yes, the, that- And, and if you, if you stand at the front of Kensington Palace in London, there is a, there’s a, there’s a statue there to William of Orange, who was then, his wife was Mary. William and Mary, the king and queen of, of England. There’s even, we even have a college, here- Yes

in the States named after- Mm-hmm… named after them. Yeah. William and Mary. Now

Tea’s Journey to Europe

00:15:23 Bruce Richardson:
I want to switch gear a little bit to talk about your book, A Soc- A Social History of Tea. Yes. I read that book because I… And, and, and, now as a Chinese, we know sort of instinctively how to brew and drink tea. I mean, tea is basically in our blood, right?

Right. And one of the most fascinating things for me is how early Europeans took to tea drinking. I mean, I’m talking about the 16- 15, 1600s, really early. Mm-hmm. Because tea arrived, by tea clippers, and there’s no instruction manual. There’s no social media, no one telling you how to brew tea. So when I read one of your anecdotes about this, aristocratic lady of the house brewing tea leaves- Mm-hmm

for her husband, I just- Well-… could not stop laughing. Well, that, that story, uh, hap- happened in, and it’s, I- it’s, I’ve heard it from different places too, but it’s a great story whether you, it’s probably not true, but it makes a great anecdote. That is that the tea, you know, Salem, Massachusetts was a great harbor.

And so every day you go down to the Port of Salem, and there would be things arriving at that port coming out of ships, things that you have never seen in your li- in your life, things coming from the other side of the world. People with different color skin that you’d never seen before, people wearing cloth that you’d never seen before.

And here is tea being unloaded. And so a man comes home with a packet of tea, and he gives it to his wife, and she says, “Well, how do you make it?” And he’s, and he had paid a lot of money for it. And she, he says, um, “I don’t know. I just know you put it, it, you add boiling water to it.” And so she, of course, she had a big cauldron of hot water in her mag- magnificent, um, fireplace there.

And so she just took the package of tea and put it into the boiling cauldron of water. And after a while, the tea leaves rehydrated, and she said, “Hmm, this looks familiar.” So she had, um, she had her servants take it out and dump the water into the yard, and took the leaves and put them on an ironstone plate with butter and salt and pepper, and served it for dinner as a salad.

So that was a demise of some, some probably pretty good tea at the, at the time for the, for Salem, Massachusetts in the 17, early 1700s. But it makes a great story. Yes. And of course, the tea leaves are… The early days in what, well, say 2,000 years ago in the Tang dynasty, the Chinese used to cook tea, right?

Yes. With tea leaves. So- Right. Right. And even then- Even add salt to it even- Yes, yes… occasionally And citrus pil- peels and so on Right. Yeah, yeah. And Lu Yu came out and said- Yeah… “You, you should stop that.” And, uh- Yes… and he wrote a book about it. What barbaric way to drink tea and wasting salt. This, this came up recently, too, in almost every newspaper, and even NPR did a story about it a couple weeks ago, about some scientist said, “Well, your, your tea would taste better if you put just a few kernels of, of pieces of salt into it.”

And people just went crazy, Yeah. It just, tea drinking, magnificent ways, and I, I just couldn’t stop laughing when, when I read that in your book. And, Well, you know, and I’m just back from, from Portugal, and, I spent a lot of time in, in the, in the libraries and, and archives there of the museums.

And it’s, it’s, you know, it was the Portuguese really- Yes… who, who had the first interaction- Yes… with, with China and Japan. And in the 15- I was gonna s- yeah, I was gonna ask you- Yeah… is the Princess of Braganza- Yeah… interested So in, you know, the 1500s you have- Yeah… you had, uh, the, these, the Portuguese explorers making their way to China and then to Japan, and you had this interaction and they discover tea.

And e- in the museum there in, in Lisbon, there are tea bowls- Yes… made by Japanese with, uh, with Christian crosses on them. So you see, you have this melding of, of two, uh, cultures- Mm-hmm… through tea in the 1500s, until all the Portuguese were kicked out as, uh, about 100 years later. But it’s, it’s just amazing that the Portuguese were the first really to discover it, and the Portuguese were the first probably to drink tea o- in, in Europe.

Yes. And so then you have in 1658, you have, as often happens, the, the British monarchy needs to, to, to find a, a new queen, and they have to go outside the country to find somebody. And so they brought in this young teenager, Catherine of Braganza- Braganza. Mm-hmm… who- Yeah… who, who came over to marry Charles II- Right

and w- brought a huge dowry with her. We got, the English got the, got the, got Bombay as part of the deal. Mm-hmm. and she, she brought with her, tea. we don’t know how much tea, maybe just a little packet of tea. But anyhow, she had tea and wh- she was probably the first, English queen to, to drink tea at the royal palaces.

And so again, you have this influence of, “Well, if it’s good enough for the king or queen, then maybe we should be drinking that,”… so it was great, great publicity for them, at that time. I love the fact that when Catherine wanted to have her tea, while she was at the court in England- They have to get her tea- Mm-hmm

through the Dutch, and not- The-… not the British East India Company then, ’cause they couldn’t. Exactly, ’cause the, the British East India Company wasn’t importing tea at the time. Yeah. The Dutch were. Yes. And they had already started bringing in- Right… huge amounts of tea. And so they s- we’d like… They, the, the English East India Company said, “We’d like to give the, a gift of tea-

to the new queen, and does anybody know where we can get some?” Where can we get it? Let’s go to, let’s go to our nemesis, the Dutch East India Company, and buy some. Yeah. That was- Yeah… probably embarrassing for them, but they had to do it. That’s just a great story, how th- this tea journey, started to evolve through Braganza, from Portugal, and, to England- Right

and then how it was introduced and adopted. Right. Yes, I remember curating a number of magnificent artwork from the museum in Portugal, Lisbon. Mm-hmm. And I tell you, that really helped us put together the missing pieces in the entire jigsaw puzzle of how- Mm-hmm… tea came to the West. Exactly. Exactly. Yeah. I love it.

Now, I wanna talk about your, some of your work as a tea master. Mm-hmm.

Gyokuro & Japanese Shaded Tea

00:22:04 Bruce Richardson:
I personally have the pleasure of tasting your magnificent Japanese shaded tea. And I remember that when we moved to Florida here, and, all of the sudden, I can’t, I, I need to drink iced tea, and you introduced me to this really healthy- Mm-hmm

refreshing Japanese shaded green tea. Mm-hmm. Can you tell me the story behind that? Well, the Gyokuro is, uh, the top 5% of all the tea that are produced in Japan is this shade-grown tea, and it’s been shade-grown, um, for centuries. And w- in America, we drank a lot of Japanese green tea 150 years ago, and, as a matter of fact, 40% of the tea we consumed in America was Japanese tea.

Now, not all of it was Gyokuro ’cause that was very expensive, but we were s- we were drinking Japanese green tea. Gy- Gyokuro, is just a beautiful work of art. There’s so much work that goes into it, but it makes one of the softest, most gentle green teas, and one of the healthiest green teas that you could possibly drink.

Ours comes from, a farmer in Kagoshima, which is southwest of Japan, one of the long peninsulas that extends down pointing towards Okinawa. And, again, they have a volcano there just like Shizuoka does with Mount Fuji, so the volcanic soil helps grow this, this tea. And, he, th- this is Master Sakamoto who makes my Gyokuro, and he completely reengineered all the soil.

It’s, one of the most beautiful organic farms I’ve, I’ve ever seen in my life. And the, the… When I walked into his garden the first time, the plants are almost vibrant, and I could feel almost the, the energy coming off of them. and then, that was before I heard his story of how he produced this. But he plunges that tea into 95% darkness for three weeks before they harvest it in the early spring, and that tea then is, is gently, steamed, and then it’s, it’s, manufactured into a beautiful, tea called Gyokuro, which a lot of my students cold steep it.

Rather than using water that’s about 175 degrees, they’ll put it into a, a s- cold steeper with, filtered water and p- keep it in the refrigerator and drink it all day long. So it’s, it’s… And it’s really healthy. Filled with umami flavors, and also filled with EGCG, great antioxidant that you find in green tea.

and the, And it’s filled also with L-theanine, which is the amino acid that’s- Mm-hmm… that’s perfect for your, for your brain. Brain health. Mm-hmm. Yes. Perfect. Let me ask you this, Bruce. Does that method of production The shaded tea plants, and the way, the gentle way of, curating and processing the tea leaves, does it preserve more nutrients in the, in the tea leaves?

Well, yeah, you see there’s har- hardly any oxidation that goes on with it. Mm-hmm. So it’s very gently steamed. The n- the thing that people don’t understand often too is if you’re going to drink tea like this for its health benefits, you need to drink it probably within 10 months of its manufacturing. Mm.

‘Cause after that, all those properties will start to dissipate. That’s why always people come to me and they say, “I tried green tea. I went to Walmart and bought, you know, 200 tea bags for 99 cents, and it just ain’t the same. What happened?” Well, you can’t, you just can’t do things like that and expect to have a, have a good tea experience.

Well, maybe they should boil them and then eat the leaves. They, they would get more nutrition out of it. Right. Always, you know, which brings me,

What Makes Good Tea

00:25:48 Bruce Richardson:
I just wrote an article on, you know, what is, what is good tea? And we talk about good tea all the time. And, and, uh, one of my favorite stories is a few years ago when we were in the Georgia O’Keeffe home out in Santa Fe, and we were going through Georgia O’Keeffe’s house and, and we were going on the way to the kitchen on the tour, and we passed through the pantry, and I thought, “Oh, this is Georgia O’Keeffe’s pantry.”

And I can- there’s the, there’s the beans that she had, and there’s rice and, uh, all these different things. She put them into mason jars and, and hand wrote on little labels what all these items were. And I came to one jar, and it said, “Tea.” I thought, “Well, great. Georgia O’Keeffe was a tea drinker. Good.” But right next to it was a jar that said, “Good tea.”

So you, you see, she, Georgia O’Keeffe knew the difference between just, well, any old tea, and then there is really, there’s good tea. And I’m sure there are people who came to her house that she would serve tea, and there were others who she would serve good tea be- and it’s mainly because she knew who would appreciate the good tea and, uh, over just a, a common, a common tea

So what was her good tea taste like? Well, um, it, I might not consider it good tea But, uh, she, she did have a, a brand of tea that, that, that she en- enjoyed quite a bit. But, she also… She had a herb garden. She went out and made a lot of her, own herbal blends as well. But anyhow, I was asked by the Georgia O’Keeffe, Museum in Albuquerque, in, Santa Fe, to design a line of teas based on Georgia O’Keeffe, and so I did that.

And we… The whole line was called Good Teas, and so we designed, three or four different teas for… based on Georgia K- O’Keeffe’s life. And I love the fact that you take Good Tea. Are they packaged in jar, mason jars too? No, they’re not. They’re, they’re, they’re in a standard steel tin, but, Yeah. Good tea.

But they all say Good, Good Tea. Yeah. Yeah. Now, I also read that you,

Darjeeling & Terroir

00:27:49 Bruce Richardson:
secure your tea, import your teas from Darjeeling. Well, well, Darjeeling’s been one of my favorite teas- Yeah. It was… for years, and I’ve, I’ve imported there for, from there for, gosh, for, almost 30 years. and it used to all come in big wooden chests, which, but no more because wood is so, so hard.

You know, there’s only, what, about 85 or 86 gardens, on that mountain, and on a clear day you can see Mount Everest way back in the background. But- Mm… that is the, the holy ground of, of good tea in, in India, and, it’s considered, you know, one of the best. And here we talk about teas that are either first flush, second flush, monsoon teas, or then autumn flush.

So we buy the tea not only by the season but also by the garden. Sometimes a g- the gardens, for instance, a garden might be, it’s very hilly, and so a garden might be, might be 1,000 feet difference in altitude from the top to the bottom. And so w- we even sometimes in those gardens distinguish between the upper gardens or the lower gardens because they, they taste, they’ll taste different.

Almost like a pinot noir. You know this- Mm-hmm… from having living in California. What makes great pinot noir is the, is that, early morning fog that comes in- Mm… and protects, the, the vineyard and then the sun comes out, warms up, and gently, encourages the grapes to, to produce their- Mm-hmm… their, natural wonderful flavors.

And, and without that, that fog, there would be no pinot noir that, that we’d wanna drink out of, out of Sonoma, or from the Central Coast. And it’s the same thing with Darjeeling teas. Those hillsides, takes a while for the sun to hit them and warm them up gently and then cool them down in the evening, and that makes all the difference in those teas, in the taste of them.

Yeah. The, the terroir you talked about. Yes. Yeah. You know, Darjeeling was very similar in landscape and terroir, like Wuyishan. Exactly. Mm-hmm. Yeah, so the, the altitude and elevation and the w- the formation, the mountains and the rocks. So it, it is an magnificent region. Um, I can’t wait to, to one day visit Darjeeling.

And the, the English certainl- certainly know how to pick the tea planting region. Well, it, it was the, the Scots had a lot to do with that as well. So you had Scottish planters going into, into Darjeeling. Mm-hmm. Sure, sure. And into Sri Lanka too as well. So they had a big influence- Yes… on that. Yes, Ceylon, the old days, right?

Yeah. Right. Um- You know, and, well, I’ll just say, too, that while we’re talking about Ceylon- There are still those old romantic names we continue to use in the tea industry, like Formosa or, or Ceylon. and w- today if… A lot of people wouldn’t know where Formosa was unless you said, “Well, it’s Taiwan.

That’s what it means.” Yeah. So, and same thing with Sri Lanka being for Ceylon, but we continue to use those, those romantic names. Yeah, I just think that there’s so much more… There’s, there’s this romance. Mm. Like, you’ve, you’ve talked about the romance of tea. And, and to me, like, using these old names like Formosa- Mm

right, is another… That’s how oolong from Wto- Wuyishan- Mm-hmm… went to Formosa in the beginning. Hence, Dongding oolong- Mm-hmm… was, famous, I mean, after Wuyi Oolong. Mm-hmm. Um, so that’s a wonderful story, too, but that’s, that’s another story all in of itself. Oh, wow. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. I wanted to ask you, Bruce, as you’re…

As a tea person now, you’re living my dream because you get to travel around the world- Mm-hmm… and, you know, talking with tea growers, tea farmers, and tea masters, and drinking tea with them all over. I mean, it is my dream to do that. Um, have you noticed the common characteristics representing good tea making, in your opinion, and how does that translate into good cup of tea?

Well, the t- the, I think it starts with the, with the tea masters that I meet, and it’s their passion. Whether it’s, you know, the man who lives at 2,500 feet on a mountain in Shizuoka, outside of, Mount Fuji, who has won three international green tea championships. And he only grows maybe five acres of tea up on this hillside.

And I walk into his garden, and he takes me through and introduces me to his plants like they’re his children. And then every spring when the plants put out their new shoots, the, the villagers come up, and they’ll, they put on white gloves, and they go out and harvest, hand-harvest the tea that he will then enter into that, that contest.

and he shares that tea with me. And, uh, you know, I don’t speak, I don’t speak Japanese. He doesn’t speak English. People often say, “Well, how do you communicate with each other?” I say, “We’re both t- people of tea. We don’t need words. We’re beyond that.” And so once we start to drink tea, we immediately are communal, human beings, and we’re, we’re communicating on a different level.

It goes back to The Book of Tea with Okakura Kakuzō, whose opening chapter, it is, is entitled, “The Cup of Humanity.” Tea is that communal cup that brings us together no matter where we go, in the world. So, uh, in the month of January, I visited tea people all over, Portugal. And immediately when I go into their shop or their tea room, you know, “Let’s have a cup of tea,” and, we’re immediately, brothers and sisters in this magical elixir

Most Memorable Tea Experiences

00:33:34 Bruce Richardson:
So what is your most memorable experience with T? That’s hard to say because I’ve had, you know, so many. But I’ll, I’ll, I told you about the, the man in Japan, so let’s go now to Taiwan, where, a few years ago I sat with, s- some of your listeners might know Wu De, who is a tea master, in, in, Taiwan, and he has, people from all over the world come to study with him.

And he’s in Zen Buddhism. And so we sat, drinking, a wonderful, tea that had been harvested from thousand-year-old tea trees i- in, in China. And we were drinking out of, thousand-year-old teacups, tea bowls, and, in this beautiful setting. And we were drinking Gong Fu style, meaning that we, he would steep the tea just, you know, very softly and gently, and then pour the tea into the cups, and we would s- drink them, just, he, one other fellow and I.

And, then we would just contemplate what’s going on with the tasting of these. And we infused that tea 16 times. 16 infusions. It took 45 minutes to go through those 16 different infusions, and we did it all in total silence. We never said a word. And so after a while you used to get lost in this beautiful aura that we’re, in, that encloses us.

And, it was one of the most beautiful tea experiences I’ve ever had in my life. It’s a solitary communal experience. It is. And we, we wrote a… My wife Shelly and I wrote a book a few years ago based on photographs that I’d shot in tea gardens around the world. It was called Looking Deeply into Tea.

And the purpose of it was to look into your tea cup every time you drink it and, and think about the people around the world who have made this tea for you. And then get deeply into it, and be very mindful of those people. And so then it becomes a part of your meditation, and you appreciate, the work that’s gone into this, and it binds you to them in a spiritual way.

Would you say that that is your- Favorite way of tasting tea? Was it looking into tea and meditating? Well, it, it is in, in those kind of situations where it’s just so rare. Now, there are, of course, there are… When, when we go on tea tasting trips or buying trips, sometimes you’re, you’re sipping tea, you’re sipping, you know, 40, 50 different teas within two hours just to get notes and, and evaluate the teas very quickly.

But then there are other times where, where you really, pay attention to it and, and let the tea talk to you and ta- and take you where it wants you to go. Mm. And see, that’s all part of the, of the tea journey, that as well. Yeah. That’s why we love tea. It is. The tea becomes your, your, your, your leader.

Yeah. Yeah. You follow tea. Mm-hmm. Um, so how has tea changed your life, Bruce? Well, it’s, y- I’d have to say it’s, it’s pretty much, allowed me to take everything that I love to do, whether it’s music, art, conversation, writing, and put that all into a, a, a, a practice of, of just allowing me to go through the world and experience these things and, and come back enriched and then share those events with, with people as well.

So that’s… And I wanna tell tea’s story, and that… I told, I did a lecture yesterday with the UK Tea Academy, Jane Pettigrew, and, we were talking about the, the Boston Tea Party and w- how we celebrated it this year. And I said, “My, The thing I’m most proud about that, position is that I was able to bring tea to the forefront.”

So this is a museum that, not only honors a, and interprets an event, it honors tea. And so we’re able to tell the story of tea and like it’s never been told before. So that’s, that’s my… If I make any… There are two things I want to put on my tombstone, “He was the tea master for the Boston Tea Party Ships & Museum.”

Second thing is, “He taught Americans how to drink good t- green tea.”

Beautifully said. Bruce, and that’s one of the… I mean, there are many things I admired about you. And when I first met you Honestly, that’s what connected me with you. Thank you. Thank you. That’s what connects tea people all over the world. Yeah. It’s the love, the passion. Um, w- when you were tasting the Formosa tea with the thousand-year-old tea bowls- Mm-hmm

were you tasting pu-erh tea or oolong tea? This was, this was an oolong tea and- Ah… but it was from, I think it was from, probably from Yunnan because it was, you know, you f- you, um… It was just, it, the flavor went on and on and on and on, and we stopped at 16 infusions. It probably would’ve, could’ve gone on even, even more.

Yeah, so then that means that they took the old ancient tea trees, the tea leaves, and processed it- Mm-hmm… in the oolong way. That’s right. And, and I’ve, you know, I’ve been, I’ve met these farmers in China who, when it goes, when they come to harvesting those leaves from those thousand-year-old trees, they, there, there’s scaffolding that’s built around the tree and they have to go up the scaffolding.

And, you just… And sometimes you have to get a certificate in order to go and, and harvest that tea. uh, and it’s, it’s so rare, so unique to have something, something like that that you can taste these days. Yes. So one of the things that I love was the reading Lisa See’s book. Mm-hmm. The Tea Girl of Hummingbird Lane.

Yes. And I love it so much that, like, these ancient tea groves that she was talking about, and one of the, one of the lines that grab, grabs me and resonates with me the most was, “You have to love tea to make good tea.” I, I just can’t get enough of that. And, and yeah, so have you seen, have you been to Yunnan and seen- That’s…

I, I have not. I’ve met, met a lot of farmers in China who have been f- are from there, but I have not made it all the way into the int- that far into the interior to Yunnan. It’s on my to-do list here. Yes, me too. Yeah. I’d love to go, and maybe, oh, who knows? Maybe the, our tea journey- Mm… will crisscross and, and will, we’ll merge, and, uh, it’s one of my, on my bucket list to see.

Yeah, she did a, she did a wonderful job of introducing a lot of Americans, and people around the world, to, to- Yes, to pu-erh. Yeah Yes. And so much that I’m so taken with the book that I’m doing a book club, a tea book club. Right. And my first book talk- Ah… is featuring around the, the, The Tea Girl of Hummingbird Lane.

I, I was so sad when I- read that novel, and I came to the last chapter, I’m like, “Oh my goodness, please don’t let it end.” Well, if you look in the, in the back, uh, she has a credit to a class that she attended at World Tea Expo years ago that Jane Pettigrew and I taught, and, uh- Oh, that’s lovely… so I’m, I’m happy to say I, I encouraged her along her tea way.

Yes, I love that. Um, yeah, so

Becoming a Master Tea Blender

00:41:44 Bruce Richardson:
now you are a master tea blender. How did you get started with that, blending tea? Well, people ask me that all the time. You know, I have two degrees in, in, in, in music, and, uh, whether you’re, whether you’re composing music or composing a concert or composing tea, uh, it all comes from the same, the same, uh, heart, same spirit.

Um, so one of the things that, that I’m kind of known for is, um, mu- museums around the world will ask me to design teas based on artwork in their collections, and so I do that, uh- Oh… constantly, and s- which is great fun. So, uh, for instance, the Cincinnati Ar- Museum of Art, um, uh, just, you know, they sent me a Van Gogh last year, and so we designed a, a, a tea based on the, the colors and, uh, of that, of that, um, painting.

And I had… We had just been to Provence, so I was all about Van Gogh, so it was, it was a great infusion of my tea journeys and, and putting it into a, a tea blend. And then for the Yale, uh, British Art Collection, I’ve done, uh, seven or eight of their teas f- for them, and these are things that I do, um, all the time.

Uh, for the… Our biggest, biggest market is in Boston for the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum. We’ve designed 12 or 14 teas f- for them, uh, as well. So to me, it’s a great challenge to get a painting and say, “All right, here’s John Singer Sargent. Uh, where did he travel in his life? What, what influenced his, influenced him?

What’s his palette? Where did he, where did he find all those colors that he uses?” Hmm. And then let’s, let’s, let’s then move that into tea as well. So, and the other one I did a few years ago for a, project in Shanghai, where I designed 20 teas for, a runway show, for fashion in July. And so I had a year preparing for that and going back and forth to China and, and de- designing all these blends based on the fabrics and colors and themes for a fashion show.

Now, that was great fun. Wow, what a magnificent way to kind of bring sensory-… together, s- you know, smell, all that into just from, from a theme. Mm-hmm. That’s right. From colors that you see, and I mean, just like bringing the imagination to life. It is, yeah. It’s fun. So I’m, I’m like an illustrator in that sense.

Yeah, yeah, creating something just from an inspiration. Well, it is, and I go in every time w- not pre-conceiving anything that I’m going to do. It’s like a jazz musician sitting down at a piano. You have all these, you have, you’ve done all the work. You’ve played all the scales. Sit down, sit down and let the music begin.

That’s the way I compose a tea blend.

And so you kind of feel what tea comes to you, what flavor comes to you. And, and past experiences as well. Yeah. Mm-hmm. Wow. Amazing. That’s a dream job. My dream job.

You have to als- also have your nose, too. I mean, a, a nose for, for all these different smells, right? Just like a, a, a wine maker. It is. And, you know, I’m, I’m, uh… Wherever I go in the world where I’m investigating new wines, here in Kentucky, we, course we make bourbon, and so I have a c- catalog of, collection of almost 200 different bourbons that I can go back and say, “This, this specific note in this bourbon,” or, “This one and this one.”

So it’s, it’s a catalog, an inventory that I keep in my brain all the time. What’s your most popular blend that you sell at the store? Well, um, m- the, the, my son Ben, who now is the, is the manager of, of our operations told me last week, he said, “You know what the number one tea was we sold in our retail section?”

Now, we’re mainly a wholesale company, but he said the m- number one retail on our website last year was the, the tea we designed for the 250th anniversary of the Boston Tea Party, and which is a tea that we, that we gave a nod to Jefferson by… because Jefferson had one of the very first, peach trees to grow, in, at hi- at Monticello.

And so we, we designed a tea that, had dried peaches in it, and it makes a great tea for either iced tea or hot tea, either way. And this was the official tin of the 250th anniversary of the Boston Tea Party, and we sold thousands of those, and it was our biggest seller last year. Now, he’s a green tea fan.

Was it the peach tree, the peach flavor mixed with green tea? No, we didn’t do it with green tea. He, he also had, he had Lapsang Souchong as well. Ah. Uh-huh. Okay. So we didn’t put, you know, peaches in Lapsang Souchong. Smells like a burnt pie. So we decided to, to, to use a, just a good standard, a black tea f- for it, like a Keemun.

Ah. Oh, that, that’s really fantastic, black tea with peach- Yep, yeah… flavor. Love it. Delicious. Mm-hmm. Um, as a tea shop owner, what experiences do you want your customers to walk away with? You know, it’s, it’s amazing, and, I was in my office today, and I always hear people who are coming into the shop, and you have to realize we’re in a little town in the middle of Kentucky that’s, agricultural.

Uh, we have, 17,000 people who live in this town. Um, and I hear, I’m hearing what people are coming in. My son or whoever’s working out there will say, “Can we help you find… What can we help you find today?” And, and the people come in and say, this morning said, “I’m looking for, I need a pound of milk oolong.”

Uh, and, and I’m going, we’ve come a long way that somebody in Kentucky can walk into a tea shop and, uh, off the street and ask for a pound of milk oolong from, from Taiwan, and it’s the real milk oolong, not a flavored milk oolong, and they know the difference between, between those. And we have people, I remember a, a, a fella getting out of his pickup truck one morning in the parking lot coming in, and he said, he walked in and he said, “I need, some of that tea that begins with the letter P.”

And I said, “You mean pu-erh?” He said, “Yeah, that’s it. That… My wife told me that’s a tea I should be drinking right now.” So we’ve, we, we… The t- world of tea in America has come a long way. Yes, poor. It’s amazing, isn’t it? Yeah. Like, but it’s thanks to people like you. Well, it, and that’s why people like Norwood Pratt, Jane Pettigrew, and I keep telling these stories.

Mm-hmm. It’s because we have a lot of new, people in the tea industry- Mm-hmm… who don’t know this, this lineage, how, how we’ve come, how far we’ve come in the past 30 years. Yeah… and we need to be thankful. People are always saying, “Oh, America has such bad tea.” Well, yes, we do, but you should have seen it 30 years ago.

There was no tea. So we’ve, we’re, we’re make- slowly making progress. And now, in a small town in Kentucky, people can pull up and say, “I want that milky oolong.” That’s-… that’s stunning. I mean, milky oolong? Yeah, right, yeah. Or, you know, The New York Times will call and say, “There’s this guy in Kentucky we need to talk to because we wanna know what’s going on in the world of tea,” in London and, and New York.

And so we, we’ve, you know, things are changing. Yeah. I, I think this tea story, she still has so much to tell. You know, as much as we know today, it’s just endless. It is, yeah. The art of tea. Mm-hmm. Now, um, just to wrap up, Bruce,

Life Lessons from Tea

00:49:50 Bruce Richardson:
if you have to write down a list of lessons learned that tea taught you- Mm… what would be on the top of that list?

Mm. Well, um, patience is, is one. Mm-hmm. Um, the other thing is to, um, uh, just allow your spirit to move into the world easily without, um, without worry, uh, uh, to be communal with people, to invit- ask them, uh, over a cup of tea, “Well, tell me about yourself,” and get to know them with this, uh, with this communal cup that we, that we carry with us wherever we go.

Those are the, are the, are the main things, um, that, uh, that tea has, tea has taught me. So humble. Yes, and I love how tea is very humbling. It is. Just when you think you know, you find out what you don’t know, and how deep and vast this tea realm is. It really is. And, although I get introduced as a tea master, you know, there is no certification of being a tea master.

You just, you’re in it, and when you turn so many years o- old, you’ve been around long enough, people c- come to you for information. So you became the… You’re the old guy on the block who is the master of, of knowing this, and that’s, uh… And but then the other thing to know is you don’t know it all, and there’s never a day goes by that I don’t learn something new about tea that I didn’t know the day before.

Yeah. I, I always say that I am a student of tea. Oh, yes. Exactly. And, you know, I just recently realized one thing. The word teacher starts with T. Yeah. I mean, yes, we take it for granted why these simple words, and I just suddenly dawn on me, teacher starts with T. Mm-hmm. Go with that. Yeah. That’s a, that’s a good bumper sticker to carry with you.

Yeah. And last question, Bruce. What does tea mean to you?

Well, it’s, um, it is my, it is my passport to the world. It is. It’s given me entree to the world, and, um, for that I’m, I’m most grateful. Yeah. Well said. It’s amazing. Thank you, Bruce. You are always amazing to me. Well, thank you. And it’s a pleasure to speak with you today, and I am grateful for tea masters like you and, and as a fellow tea person, for me to hear your stories and your journey.

It’s very inspiring. Well, thank you. Thanks again. Thank you. Good to see you. Good to see you. Bye. Bye-bye.