A tea drinker from a very early age, I developed a serious interest in tea and all things related to tea about 30 years ago when the co-founders of Banana Republic, Mel and Patricia Ziegler, started their tea company The Republic of Tea with young entrepreneur Bill Rosenzweig. I avidly read their book, The Republic of Tea: Letters to a Young Zentrepreneur, in which the three shared their philosophy of business and philosophy of life and detailed how they created a start-up tea company. I was hooked! Hooked on drinking good quality tea and on the possibility of one day starting a tea company myself.
While I continued working in strategic planning for a major aerospace company, on weekends I developed plans for realizing my tea company dream. I started subscribing to magazines about tea, attending tea conferences and buying and studying books on tea. The more I read, the more my appetite for learning about tea expanded, and I realized how much more I had to learn. So…my tea book collection grew…and grew…and now I have over 300 books on tea and keep reading and learning.
Two of my favorite tea books are by Helen Gustafson, the famed tea buyer at the renowned restaurant Chez Panisse in Berkeley, CA. Gustafson, the author of “The Agony of the Leaves: The Ecstasy of My Life with Tea” and “The Green Tea User’s Manual”, chastised the restaurant’s dishwashers if they didn’t turn the cast iron teapots upside down to drain after washing them.
When Gustafson died at the age of 74 in 2003, she was recognized by international tea authority and author, James Norwood Pratt, who said, two decades ago “it was impossible to find a good cup of tea anywhere in America. Now it is only highly unlikely. The difference is Helen Gustafson.” Alice Waters, owner of Chez Panisse, said that Gustafson took the restaurant’s tea offerings “to a different place.”
My friend Lorrie and I read “The Agony of the Leaves” many years ago, and we’ve both re-read it several times. One of my favorite breakfast treats is Gustafson’s Pepper Toast. To make Pepper Toast, just toast slices of white bread, spread the slices liberally with butter, sprinkle with coarse pepper from the pepper grinder, cut into triangles and eat hot. Delicious!
