William Liu is a 20-year-old sophomore at Wake Forest University so inspired by tea that he and his classmates established the World Tea Association on campus and online. The group offers tea discovery and tasting sessions weekly and hosts occasional tea panels with presentations by tea professionals, tea scholars, and tea explorers. The events bring together many who are new to tea, says William, “we aim to redefine the tea experience through an interdisciplinary approach and expose the true leaf to a greater audience.” In this segment he describes why tea appeals to young people and explains his view that tea learning is ongoing. “The tea journey has no destination,” he says, “it involves only intention and lifelong learning.”
William Liu, a student at Wake Forest University, discusses why tea appeals to young people.A joint meeting of the Anthro Club and World Tea Association at Wake Forest University.
Tea Awakening
Traveling with his mother to China awakened in William Liu a strong interest in gong fu style preparation of single-origin teas. When the 20-year-old sophomore returned to the Wake Forest University campus he discovered others were also eager to explore tea. Crawford Wheeler, who grew up in London, and Roxie Ray, who grew up in a Persian household, joined him in establishing the World Tea Association, a group that hosts weekly tastings and occasional panel discussions. William hosts a podcast on behalf of the association and continues his education in tea.
Dan Bolton: Thanks for joining us on the podcast William. Tell us the story about how you first discovered fine tea.
William: My family on my mom’s side is from Yunnan but my mom only started drinking tea in recent years. I only started drinking tea a year ago. The inspiration was a trip back to China where I was first exposed to gongfu tea. My mom brought me to various tea shops in Chengdu and Yunnan, and it was for me personally a way to connect with my cultural roots. Growing up in Canada as a Chinese Canadian, that wasn’t something that I was really aware of and so I found a greater appreciation and I realized that tea is so much more than a drink.
I realized that this type of brewing and single-origin tea isn’t common at all in the West, at least not now. I really wanted to share with my fellows on campus and that’s what led to the creation of The World Tea Association.
Dan:What is it about tea that appeals to young people?
William: A few things really capture the attention of young people, it’s new, it’s very new for a lot of young people and also the nature of tea is that it’s very healthy and the trend with our current generation right now is that we are becoming much more aware of what we are putting into our body. In other words, we’re becoming a lot more health-conscious and we’re seeking mindful practices. Brewing tea is one of those things that provides an experience that teabags are not able to do. Quality tea allows you to really sit down and reflect on life and become more mindful with the tea.
Our society right now is growing a lot more diverse and globalized. People are seeking different cultures and people are seeking new ways to do things that might be different from what they’re accustomed to and also with COVID, especially with COVID, I’ve seen a lot more young people get into tea because with COVID everyone has been forced to reflect and isolate and pretty much contemplate our life. Tea is the perfect activity to practice mindfulness and to become much more aware of ourselves.
Dan:Are they also drinking herbals and tisanes?
William: A lot of my friends consume a lot more of the tisanes and herbal tea mainly to help them to calm down. I also noticed a lot also drink, for example, chamomile to help sleep at night to get in the mood to level down. These teas usually are a lot more floral, so people like the scent, people like the sweetness of it, and that’s what attracts them.
Dan:Talk to me about the appeal of bubble tea.
William: We don’t have a lot of bubble tea shops. I do notice that bubble tea is already really big and a lot of people do gravitate towards bubble tea because it’s accessible, it’s convenient and it’s also very sweet, and so that’sone of the things that probably attracts a lot of people. It’s also a way for them to bond and to connect together similarly to how we have gone through tea as a way to socialize and to, you know, discuss what’s going on in our lives. Tea has that same purpose with a lot of people our age.
Dan: What can tea professionals do to bring more young people into the tea community?
William: I think the best way for tea professionals to bring more young people into the community is essentially just through exposure, reaching out to universities in your local cities and establishing collaborations with various groups and student organizations.
What I see right now is that a lot of people have not been exposed to it, but once they do become exposed to tea, it’s something that a lot of people become interested in. So I would say tea professionals reach out to the young people that they know, find something to connect. For example I noticed that some local tea shops would host weekly nights playing chess and serving tea. People can come in and they will sit down and while they’re playing chess they would be exposed to the environment in the shop. The tea that they consume will be the tea from the tea shop.
The World Tea Association is committed to building community, promoting health and life long learning.
Bringing People Together Through Tea
The culture of tea today is present but faint and wrongly perceived. The World Tea Association redefines the tea experience through an interdisciplinary approach to expose the true leaf to a greater audience and community.
We believe that strong bonds are formed through intentional activities done together such as having tea. Conversations around tea are always insightful and introspective. We hope to create a community where tea is just as much the center as it is not.
Promoting the health benefits of tea is a core principle. Tea is more than a dose of caffeine. The physical and mental health benefits of consuming tea will always be felt.
Our vision extends beyond just drinking and sharing. To create a successful community with tea, the learning aspect must be continual and mutual. Advancing our knowledge of the leaf and keeping an open mind is important as it cultivates the quality of humility. Nobody at the World Tea Association knows everything about tea nor does anyone claim they are a “Tea Master.”
The tea journey has no destination, it involves only intention and lifelong learning.
William Liu, Founder and President Crawford Wheeler, Vice President & Director of Coordination Roxie Ray, Director of Marketing & Public Relations Tyler Pruitt, Faculty Advisor & Treasurer
The TO TEA TOGETHER podcast celebrates and promotes artisanal tea culture by engaging in conversations that bring diverse minds together and bridge cross-cultural gaps over a pot of quality tea. TO TEA TOGETHER shares insightful conversations from the next generation of leaders, athletes, artists, entrepreneurs, and scholars while cultivating a new era for the appreciation of artisanal tea culture.
Nepal’s tea industry reported record sales in 2020. The fabled tea land is growing greater quantities and greater varieties of loose and broken leaf teas thanks to a government-initiated expansion of the industry to high altitude gardens in non-traditional growing areas. Rural agrarian entrepreneurs are redefining offerings for an international market thirsty for the distinct taste of Himalayan grown oolongs, white teas, and premium black whole leaf. In this segment Aravinda Anantharaman introduces Aasha Bhandari, newly named to promote trade at the Himalayan Tea Producers Cooperative, a consortium of all orthodox tea producers established in 2003.
Aasha Bhandari on the opportunities for Himalayan Tea from Nepal.Nepal is expanding tea production into high-altitude regions of the country to produce more Orthodox tea. Photo courtesy HIMCOOP/Aasha Bhandari
Himalaya Tea Opportunity
Aasha Bhandari is the International Trade and Promotion Executive at HIMCOOP, in Kathmandu, Nepal. She has taken over from John Taylor who resigned as Marketing Manager. Aasha was with the International Trade Centre working on a sustainable map project when she was invited to take over this role at HIMCOOP. In this segment she talks to us about her plans for HIMCOOP and what she sees as strengths, challenges and opportunities for Nepal’s tea industry.
Aravinda Anantharaman: You’ve recently taken charge of trade and marketing for HIMCOOP. What will you be working on in promoting Nepal’s tea industry?
Aasha Bhandari: We have good quality tea, but we need to focus more on marketing, pricing, and our strategy to promote it in the international market. Nepal has mostly SMEs, farmer-based production and strong factories. We may not be strong in terms of capacity or production but are strong in terms of the quality of tea that we make.
Aasha: Tea a growing industry and people are more focused on Orthodox tea rather than CTC. Even in Orthodox, there are varieties of tea – Nepal makes oolong, black tea and white tea. I’m seeing many young tea planters who are involved in the industry or who have started in the tea industry.
They are more focused on putting creativity in tea. One of the factories, a young factory, they are playing with the taste of tea and the processing of tea and that has actually produced a good output. I can see a lot of young people getting involved in focussing on quality.
Aravinda: What do you see as challenges and opportunities?
Aasha: I am excited about adding more SMEs. We have 20 to 26 producers at HIMCOOP, but I want to include more SMEs and go to the farmers on their field and convince them that they have potential marketing outside the country and in exports. For example, we have good teas, but the farmers are unaware about the pricing, about the packaging or invoicing even about the Exim Code (required registration for firms importing or exporting goods from Nepal).I am excited to give that information to them and teach them, or at least help them to think about export in near future. My first priority is to give SMEs the same platform that we are giving to our other producers.
I do feel the pressure that’s on my shoulder to sell the teas. To do better than last year when we had the biggest sale. This year, there is a little difficulty getting the samples to Kathmandu and sending it outside the country. DHL is expensive. Flights are also cancelled. When I started, I felt a little bit worried about not being able to match up the sales of last year or the work we were able to do last year.
I also feel that being very young, I may have to prove myself and that I can deliver.
Aravinda: How has it been so far?
Aasha Bhandari cupping
Aasha: I am in touch with our producers and they are doing well. There are difficulties but they are managing. During the first flush, there were hail stones in some places and a few of our producers were sharing that the hail destroyed their tea bushes, especially the buds. But overall, it’s been good so far. I am hopeful about a good second flush. I’m looking forward the white tea actually, because that has good price and good market value. We have specific buyers, small buyers for white tea, and they’ve been inquiring about the white tea. Producers were not able to make white tea in the first flush because of too much rain.
Aravinda: What is the framework of the Nepal tea industry?
Aasha: We are small in geography; we have small gardens and a small production. But if I have to describe the model, how it has been operated, it’s fully based on a small cooperatives, SME models where a few groups of farmers run the factory. The farmers don’t own the factory, the factory is owned by the cooperative of the farmer groups.
At HIMCOOP, member producers have their own factories and some own their own garden also. A few, 10-20% of the factories, depend on the farmers. Since last three, four years, small factories are also being built by farmers themselves.
Aravinda: How does HIMCOOP play a role in the larger Nepal industry?
Aasha: HIMCOOP was officially started in 2003 as a consortium of orthodox tea producers. It was basically established as a joint market marketing platform for the producers. It was established to promote Nepali Orthodox tea in the international market. It works on a cooperative model. We work on samples. Producers send us samples. I taste the tea, characterize its quality and taste, place a price over that and forward to buyer. So that’s how it’s been done. Members send us sample every season, we find buyers and forward the sample to the buyers.
HIMCOOP has played a very crucial role to promote the Nepal tea industry because we have a lot of buyers through this platform. Even last year, with the COVID situation, we, as an organization, did not stop. In fact, last year saw the highest sales for HIMCOOP in its entire 18-20 years existence.
Aravinda: What are the factors that have helped create the brand identity of Nepal’s tea?
Aasha: I think it’s the location and the weather, the bushes are planted at an altitude of around 7,500 feet.
Second is the innovation. At HIMCOOP, we have different types of factories. Some focus on quality in volumes while there are a few small factories where they love to play with the tea making. I think, including all other factors, it’s the innovation and the creativity. There are a few factories that have been doing really well. Others are focusing on making good quality tea, not taking risks on the creativity and innovation. But there are different markets for all these teas.
Aravinda: Is HIMCOOP primarily looking at exports or also at the domestic market?
Aasha: On that point, actually last year we were in dilemma with the lockdown and how long it would last. It was end of March, the starting point of first flush when we faced a lockdown. I asked the producers about the local market and plans to market to them. But luckily, the COVID situation was not that problematic last year and we were able to sell all the teas. I bring up this topic quite frequently. Nepal has a limited domestic market. But it’s mainly CTC that is consumed by people. There are people who love trying different types of tea. I think we’ve not marketed… we lack marketing in domestic markets.
I’m not saying we should not export but I think we should also be able to hold the domestic market. I was quite surprised to know that a few of, most of our producers have never thought about the local market. The reason is often cost. They sayit’s not cost effective for them because here people would purchase on less price. I don’t agree because I have been to tourist places like Thamel where they are selling White Tea, SF, Oolong, and silver needle tea at double the price they are exporting. Of course the quantity matters. Domestic market might not be able to consume that much of tea, at the moment, but I think we should offer a percent to domestic market.
Many factories would gift us tea. It was a lot of tea for me alone and I would give it to my friends. They didn’t know that Nepal is producing such good teas. And they’ve been asking me where, which factory. I told them that it’s not for sale and that they have to contact the factory individually if they want to buy it. So there is a gap between the producers and the consumers here in Nepal. From my own personal experience, a lot of people that I’ve given tea as a gift, they want to buy that tea again. There are a few tea shops but either they quote a high price, or it’s tea from Darjeeling, Assam, Sri Lanka. I think we need to focus on the domestic market also.
Aravinda: Would you say, Nepal tea as a brand has been established?
Aasha: I would say it’s in the process. We have a long way to go. I think for now, for the factories that we are selling, for the buyers that come to us, it has already been established, not for the whole market. Buyers do recognize Nepal as being very good. They do expect that if it’s from Nepal, it will be good. I want to take HIMCOOP, establish it as a marketing brand in the future.
Tea withering facility, 2020 was a record year for sales. Photo courtesy HIMCOOP/Aasha Bhandari
HIMCOOP (Himalayan Tea Producers Cooperative)
HIMCOOP is a joint marketing consortium of all Orthodox tea producers of Nepal. It was established in 2003 out of the need to link producers of high quality teas to buyers in the international arena. The intent is to jointly market tea by all producers on a common platform, through a one window sale outlet.
HIMCOOP forwards samples right through out the season to buyers all over the world and also provides any information required on Nepal tea and the Nepal tea industry. HIMCOOP represents estates that offer a variety of white, green, oolong, hand rolled and black whole and broken leaf tea.
HIMCOOP has respect for nature, people, social responsibility, and a commitment to maintain high standards in encompassing all aspects of cultivation and production of quality tea from Nepal.
Share this post with your colleagues. | Episode 19 | Nepal has good quality tea, but we need to focus more on marketing, pricing, and our strategy to promote “Nepal Tea Quality from the Himalaya” in the international market.
Eva Lee is a pioneer of modern tea cultivation in Hawaii, establishing with her husband, Chiu Leong, a tea garden and nursery in the Village of Volcano. The farm supplied growers with hearty cultivars first introduced in 2000 by researchers at the College of Tropical Agriculture and Human Resources. Hawaiian tea is grown on many farms producing less than 100 kilos a year. Small amounts of premium tea are exported, but most is purchased by local restaurants and tourists. In this conversation, Lee describes how Hawaii’s “modest but very strong tea industry” adapted during a difficult year.
Eva Lee describes the 2021 harvest in HawaiiTea Hawaii owners Eva Lee and Chiu Leong
Uniquely Hawaiian
Eva Lee and Chiu Leong came to tea with a background in the arts, creating an estate within the temperate rainforest near the summit of Hawaii’s Kilauea Volcano. The couple are involved daily in every aspect of the farm production including managing a nursery propagating tea, tea processing, conducting tea tours and educational workshops and marketing home grown tea. During the pandemic they added co-packaging and labeling to their set of skills. Lee says that Hawaii has a “significant role in furthering tea culture.” The willingness of the Hawaiian tea community to collaborate with fellow growers, with the support of institutions and researchers has enabled Tea Hawaii & Company to express teas unique to the world, says Lee.
DanBolton: Eva, will you update listeners on this year’s harvest?
Eva Lee: Our spring season began quite late, the reason is Hawaii has been inundated with a very, very extensive rainy season we’re coming off of about seven plus months of pretty much straight rain resulting in deep, deep saturation.
The plants have really responded as spring is now revealed itself. The tea plants throughout the state are expressing themselves considerably more this time of year than they have in the past. Usually we would have begun harvesting in February or March for our first flush spring harvest. Right now we have quite a bit of production of harvests going on.
Dan: What makes Hawaii-grown tea special?
Some of the teas are grown in the native forests. We’ve got shade-grown tea up at 4,000-foot elevations and we also have teas that are in full sun, at 900-foot elevations on the East side of the island.
Our particular garden on the summit of Kilauea Volcano at 4,000-foot elevation is on the windward side of the volcano. A fellow grower on the Leeward side, same elevation, experienced conditions that are quite different. It’s much drier, much more sun. They also had a late spring harvest but here the microclimates, the conditions on the mountain, can be quite considerably different, just moments away.
One of the reasons why the tea is so special is that this generation of tea growers are first generation tea growers. We haven’t had a history of tea agriculture in this state, everyone that is growing tea is doing a lot of experimenting. They are growing it out of a love of the leaf.
Those of us that established ourselves in the areas that are most conducive to tea cultivation have a mulch and forest canopy built over hundreds of years.
In Hawaii, we don’t have the same plant diseases and the same problems or challenges that other tea producing countries have because we are isolated in the middle of the Pacific. We also don’t have continents that are close by, so we don’t have fall-out and pollutants. Every season has a kind of excitement. This year was unusually wet. Each season is quite different. It’s very, very exciting now that we’re at that place where growers here can provide the public with a variety of teas.
Dan:Will you describe the economics of tea in 2021 and how Hawaiian growers adapted to the sharp decline in the tourist and restaurant business?
Here in Hawaii we rely a lot on agritourism. Many of the restaurants here in Hawaii closed down due to the pandemic.
We had to very act quite quickly on decisions as to production. We had to slow gardens down because we were faced with inventory that was not moving because of restaurant closures.
Labor costs in Hawaii have always been much more than in other tea producing countries, so decisions that we had to make definitely hurt some labor because we were not able to have as many people work at the gardens at the same time.
We changed some of the harvest techniques and processing and how much time that we would put into or not some of our crafted teas. So the percentages changed from premium grades to secondary grades.
Our first thought was maybe they’re not as good, but actuality we were nicely surprised that we were able to produce some very wonderful secondary and third grade teas. Instead of selling direct to restaurants, it would go direct to consumers, for instance in food hubs, so we always did a lot of distribution of our teas direct to consumers, in farmer’s markets, but many of the farmers markets were closed down during that time.
So we ended up manufacturing teas that we called “Tea to Go” for people that were here locally to take our tea and be able to steep them very easily. We were moving from bulk loose leaf to individually filter packing our teaand doing it all here in Hawaii.
We’veturned into not only growers, and producers, but also co-packers, and so our co-packing activities are also on location.
In Hawaii we have a modest but very strong tea industry. and now some of the people that ended up experiencing the teas found that they were more accessible. Well for premium teas, by the kilo, we were talking about $400.
We are wholesaling them by so many units but to break it down for you they are wholesaled for $7.00 for that 1 ounce 10 filter package so to the consumer pays $8.25, I believe, is the markup of some of these stores and food hubs are doing.
So we also have to have discussions with even on some of our premium tea local retailers. So if I sell this to you for $10, you know instead of selling it for $20, think about $18. That’s a formula that seems to work pretty well with some of the retailers.
We also cut down on some of our costs of packaging. We made our own packaging and so that has helped for this period of time. We may continue, you know. We share a little information on the inside of each package so people can learn a little bit more about us and I think it gives people the confidence to maybe try the premiums.
Tea Hawaii Farm, Volcano, Hawaii. Photo courtesy Tea Hawaii/Eva Lee
Collaboration Expands Variety
Tea Hawaii & Company partners with other Hawaii tea growers to expand their offering of rare, premium Hawaii grown teas.
Growers include Mike Riley, who produces oolong tea at the Volcano Tea Garden, located at 3,600 feet above sea level in Mauna Loa Estates. His plantings are from cultivars originating in China, Japan, and Taiwan.
“Johnny’s Garden” owned by John and Kathryn Cross, was established in 1993 in Hakalau on the eastern slopes of Mauna Kea adjoining Kaahakini Stream a perennial spring fed river along the Hamakua coast on the island of Hawaii. It is the oldest of Hawaii’s commercial gardens. John grows Rare Makai Black teas.
Tea is a powerful conduit for health and wellness, says Steve Schwartz, founder of Art of Tea in Los Angeles and a graduate of the Ayurvedic Institute in New Mexico. In this segment, he discusses the challenging role for tea retailers amid the pandemic. Retailers are wise to offer counsel on the comfort and health benefits of tea, educating themselves in both the traditional and science-based properties and then sharing that knowledge with customers.
A Conduit for Health and Wellness
By Dan Bolton
Steve Schwartz, founder of Art of Tea in Los Angeles and a graduate of the Ayurvedic Institute in Albuquerque, New Mexico, discusses the challenging role for tea retailers amid the pandemic. They are wise to counsel comfort and prevention and the science-based benefits of tea, often to consumers seeking a cure or at least boost their immunity to ward off the virus.
Steve Schwartz: As soon as COVID hit, we found people wanted to learn more about tea.
So we created a “Become a Tea Expert” series. It’s on our website and it’s 25 videos all on how to taste, and understand tea at a deeper level. Right now we’re working on content for level 2.
That’s a responsibility of a tea shop owner, right? If you know that someone coming into the store with typical supermarket teabag experience, retailers can explain tea on a much deeper level, describe that blissful state, that “tea mind”, that elevated consciousness. I think that is the ultimate responsibility of a tea shop owner, when they know that you can reach those levels and to be able to pass it on.
If we can explain some of the biological, the biofeedback effects with tea and help unlock that journey for them that’s a beautiful process.
Our mission is to create a delicious experience and we want to impact as many lives as we can through tea. We believe that tea is a powerful conduit for health and wellness and also for internal connection and connection with loved ones.
Dan Bolton: Long before you founded Art of Tea in 2004, you traveled widely to see firsthand how herbs are grown and processed. You then spent a few years experimenting, blending botanicals in your living room. Today as a master blender you are known for utilizing a diverse range of inclusions. You latest blend is a Chaga Chai Mushroom Tea. The chai is a fusion of organic Assam tea that is hand blended together with ashwagandha, Chaga mushroom, and fragrant spices. It is featured in your wellness collection. You mentioned blending goji and Chaga seven years ago and then abandoning the experiment after concluding “no one is going to drink mushroom tea.“
So I’m not a huge mushroom expert. Ayurveda tends to see mushrooms as tamasic, meaning it’s sort of low energy, but if you look at it from the root level, there are certain parts of the mushroom, when combined with other spices and botanicals they can unlock deep immune boosting properties, Chaga being one of them.
We created a beautiful Chaga Chai with cardamom, a good lung opener, and cinnamon, good blood cleanser, and chaga, a wonderful thyroid-stimulating and mood boosting botanical.
Dan:Consumers tell market researchers that tea was immensely helpful during lockdowns, calming and comforting amid the stress of home schooling and work. In the US, packaged tea sales were up more than 12% during 2020 and online sales reached new highs. There were big gains in sales of botanicals.
Steve: There’s a story where the master said to his student, go within a one-mile radius and find a single botanical that doesn’t have medicinal properties. The student very confidently says OK, I’m up for the task but comes back 24 hours later, sobbing. “Master I failed. I couldn’t find a single botanical that doesn’t have medicinal properties,” he said. The master replied “no, in fact, you’ve passed. Every botanical has medicinal properties.”
When it comes to blending, sourcing, I want to know where the botanicals come from, know where the leaves, the fruits, the roots come from, how they’re grown, how they started.
I really want to understand the soil conditions, even the environmental impact on the community and the people around it and how that is helping to create better, better quality products. If it’s not something that I want to give to my children my community, then it’s not something that we want to be able to showcase in this world.
Dan:Tea consumption has declined in foodservice, making business more difficult for importers and wholesalers like the Art of Tea.
Steve: There’s a lot of pain and a lot of suffering, that unfortunately could take one or two years until we fully get through this. I think that there’s hidden blessings in all this, I, I think that the future is incredibly bright.
We saw hotels and other hospitality venues being successful and so we asked them for permission. We asked, could we share best practices to some other properties? We ended up becoming a conduit for improvement in best practices. It changed that sales process to much more of a consultative relationship, with much more handholding, a “we’re all in this together process.”
I think the hotels and the restaurants and cafes that we work with really benefited from that.
I’m not a doctor, I’m not here to make any medical claims, but one of my observations is that if we believe that the universe has produced us for a short window in time to be able to live out our fullest potential as part of a longer story, right? Then we have to show up fully and intentionally with the best life, the best care, and the best responsibility that we can for our family, ourselves, for our community, for our world.
It really does start with a daily simple ritual, just leaves in water. What that can do in terms of the health effects ? you can compound that powerful effect day by day.
It’s incredible.
The Art of Tea Academy
At Art of Tea, we are passionate about sharing our knowledge and understanding of the depths of the drink that has been enjoyed for centuries. Art of Tea Academy is here to help educate you on tea types, tea recipes, and how to make the perfect cup of tea (hot or iced!) The biggest investment you have to make to become a tea expert is your time.
Art of Tea Academy has more than 25 modules of in-depth content and videos about the history of tea, the how-tos of tea, and so much more. We are so excited to offer this as a way to connect with our communiTEA.
Our mission is to create a delicious experience and to impact as many lives as we can through tea. Thank you for being a loyal Art of Tea customer. We couldn’t do what we do without your amazing support.
Chitrita Banerji is one of the most important chroniclers of food history, having written extensively about food and culture, in particular of food in Bengal. After graduating in English in Calcutta, she moved to the US for a Masters in Literature from Harvard University. She now lives in Cambridge, Mass. Her first book, Life and Food in Bengal was published in 1991. And from there on, food became her medium for storytelling. She has since published The Hour of the Goddess: Memories of Women, Food, and Ritual in Bengal; Bengali Cooking: Seasons & Festivals; Eating India: An Odyssey into the Food and Culture of the Land of Spices, besides fiction and biography. While America has become home, she has retained a close connection with India, especially Calcutta and Bengal.
Chitrita Banerji at a book signing during the Apeejay Kolkata Literary Festival. Photo by Amitava Guha.
Tea is Both Cultural and Personal
I discovered Chitrita Banerji’s writing in 2006. Her article, “What Bengali Widows Cannot Eat,” was my introduction to food writing. It’s common knowledge here that the Bengali loves their tea. And except for one, so far, every Bengali or Calcuttan I have met has confirmed that tea is a big part of their lives and had a story on the ready. To the Bengali, tea is both cultural and personal.I am curious about where one ends and where the other begins.So, for International Tea Day, I asked to have a conversation with her, on tea.
Aravinda Anantharaman: I was introduced to your work through the Granta Book of India which had an article by you, What Bengali Widows Cannot Eat. It was the first time I had read something from the genre of food writing. I didn’t even know you could write about food like this. You opened up a whole world to me that way.
Chitrita Banerji: Oh, thank you. That makes me very happy. That’s one of the things that a writer is always hoping to do. I may be opening up a world for you, but by doing that, I’m also bringing you into my world. That is a very gratifying feeling always for the writer. This is the real internal community that we depend on and that nourishes us. Food writing is something that has now become very popular. I started doing it a long time ago. And right from the beginning, I felt it’s really, really limiting to think food writing is only a collection of recipes. This is what you do, this is what people eat in this part of the country or that part… What does it mean? It has to be integrated with the way they live, with the way they think or the way they relate to each other. And I felt if I cannot portray that, I don’t want to write about food. So for almost 30 years now, I’ve been in a writing about food.
Aravinda: Would you place tea as part of the Bengali food culture?
Chitrita: I am a bit hesitant about saying that although it is such a big part of Bengali social culture. When we think of food, there is a kind of a wall between food and drink, and that is true in the Western concept too; people who write about food in the Western world do not write about wine. That is a separate kind of expertise, a separate world. So, tea is not something that I would normally consider part of our food culture. And yet, it is part of our relational culture, part of our way to bond with each other. It’s interesting that a foreign drink brought in by a foreign colonial power became such an important thing and it has now — at least in Bengal, it has acquired the Bengali identity. We don’t think of it as a foreign drink anymore. In fact, very few people actually know that history, very few people realise the origins of tea, and how the British colonial politics and economics worked in order to bring tea into India and then get to marketing tea so that Indians would develop a taste for it.
It’s like some food items, like potatoes and chili peppers. We think these are our foods and just forget that 500 years ago, we’d never heard of such things, that they came with the Portuguese into India. Some of these items are really a great testament to how human beings adopt new things and then give them a character that makes it their own.
It’s a transformative process that I find very interesting. And I find that is very hopeful, not in just the context of food but in the context of our relationships with each other. Very few Bengalis can do without their tea or without their potatoes or their chili peppers. We’re not changing tea or potatoes or chili peppers into something else, but we’re making them our own by accepting them and enjoying them. And acceptance brings enjoyment, real enjoyment. And this is something people don’t think about.
Aravinda: How did your relationship with tea develop?
Chitrita: When I was growing up tea was forbidden to young people, especially young girls. Everybody seemed to believe that tea is bad for the young. And if you pressed them, they’d come up with these silly answers, like, it’s going to make your skin so dark and nobody’s going to marry you. Or it’s going to be just ruin your liver — as if it’s alcohol.
I lived in a multicultural family home, several generations. It was a very big family, many, many relatives, and also lots of visitors because we had family members living outside Calcutta who would come to visit and stay with us. A big family means many ceremonies and many occasions like weddings, engagements, birthdays… So again droves of friends and relatives would come and some would stay.
Tea was always a presence morning, noon, and night. Nobody ever seemed to think that drinking tea at night would give you sleeping problems. And this is something that I have learned after coming to the West, that caffeine in tea and caffeine in coffee is bad for sleep. Nobody used to think that way before. So even if a visitor came to your house, say at 8: 30 in the evening, the first thing you would say was Cha khabe or Cha kori? And, mostly the answer would be yes. So tea was, next to water, almost the life-sustaining drink for the Bengalis and it was not different from my family to any other family.
And as you grow up and you develop independence and you’re allowed to go out on your own and meet with friends, one of the things you would do is go to a tea shop or find a place where you can eat order some tea and sit together. We did that unthinkingly, instinctively, but there was this feeling inside us that our adda, our talk would only be enhanced if we had a cup of tea with us.
Since I was going to Presidency College, I enjoyed the coffee in Coffee House, right opposite. Most of the time there was no tea obviously. In the coffee house, you get different kinds of coffee and it was considered very sophisticated. I have to say that, though I never admitted it, I never really enjoyed coffee the way I enjoy tea. And that I attribute to my father who made me learn about tea and appreciate tea in a very sophisticated, nuanced way.
He would make different kinds of tea and I would taste bit by bit. And sometimes I didn’t like what he would consider the best tea, but he would say, well, you have to develop a taste for it. Next time when we make this, you will see that you like it a little bit better and you might enjoy it more. That never happened with coffee for me.
My mother didn’t really like the taste of tea. She would add lemon juice in her tea. It was her way of totally obviating the taste of tea. For her, unlike me, there was no father to sort of gradually inculcate her into a new taste and a new drink. When she was growing up, she never had anything and she started drinking tea – and disliking it, of course – at a comparatively late age. She had a south Indian friend who introduced her to coffee. And she just fell in love with that taste and that scent and, the flavour. And she was a very good cook. And I think she was also attracted by the process of making coffee. And once she got to develop a taste for coffee, she hardly ever drank tea. It was always my father and me.
Aravinda: The tea that your father brought home, the blends he brought, was there a certain kind of tea that you think of as the tea from your house, as being different from the tea that was made in other people’s houses?
Chitrita: Oh, definitely. My father spent a fortune on tea. There were a lot of tart comments from my mother and other family members about this. It was very high quality Darjeeling tea, I don’t remember names of estates that he preferred. I have to say, I don’t remember him telling me, Okay, this is from that estate. He would simply say, “This is a new blend that I found. I tried it. I think you might like it, or this is a new blend that I found which is stronger than what I gave you last time and less fragrant but it might actually make you feel more energised. And so I would drink expecting that to happen. And most of the time, what he said would happen did happen. It was always tea from Darjeeling, but different qualities, different blends, and sometimes they would sell tea that was not very expensive but not very cheap either where they would lend a little bit of tea dust with the tea leaves. That would be the kind of tea that you could have on a more regular basis.
My father was obsessed with tea but he was not closed minded. When he found that after a while, I really didn’t like drinking tea with milk, he was not disappointed in me though he preferred it that way. After the first few times, I sort of settled into a pattern of drinking tea with sugar. Now I don’t drink tea with anything, just tea, but he always had the British style tea, milk and sugar and tea.
When I was older, when people came to my house, occasionally I would say, I will make the tea. My father would smile and sit there. And sometimes I failed miserably. I had a lot of trial and error to go through before I could make tea to the satisfaction of my father.
He was a really kind man, so he would never say it was undrinkable or chuck it. He always drank whatever I prepared but then he would say, maybe you should have done this, or waited a little bit. There was this whole thing of as soon as the water boils, take it off the heat. Don’t let it sit there and boil while you’re doing something else, that also affects the flavour of the tea.
It was a good training for me to do that. I didn’t learn to cook. Every time I say this, nobody believes it, but I actually loathed the idea of cooking. My mother sometimes tried to teach me. But I just did not want to go to the kitchen. I did not learn to cook until I was in the States.
Aravinda: When did you start enjoying cooking?
Chitrita: After my first marriage. I was asking my mother, asking friends and older ladies who lived in the Boston area, I would ask them to teach me. And, once I found that I made something and I made it well and it gave people pleasure, that made me feel okay, this is something I could do, it’s not drudgery. See, while I was growing up, in my head, cooking was drudgery. But that whole other thing of assembling many complicated items and then producing something and then that giving so much pleasure to other people, that made me see cooking in a completely different way and made me feel this is something that I will enjoy doing for the rest of my life.
I’m so glad that I could learn from my mother while she was around. She really was phenomenal. I know I’m not half as good as her but still I’m pretty good. This is an art that I was fortunate enough to have learned about and acquired. It lends joy to my life. So in the same way, when I make tea, I make tea very carefully. I still do what my father said. I don’t let the water sit there and boil forever. I time the tea steeping very carefully. Sometimes because I realise I’m getting a bit more absent-minded I even set a timer like two minutes or three minutes, and I pour out my tea. I do it carefully.
Aravinda: But what is it about tea that brings people and conversations together. It’s almost as if you can’t have one without other especially in a Calcutta context. All conversations, all gatherings seem to be enabled by tea.
Chitrita: Traditionally speaking Bengalis did not have a drinking culture. And in fact, if you go back and look at the texts from Bengal, say maybe 500 years ago or 600 years ago, there are a lot of narratives where meals are described in great detail, but the only drink is water.
You don’t sit around and chat over a glass of water. The water is always accompaniment to the meal and it does not have a separate role. But tea is separate from food. It has this association with energy. Tea gives you energy tea, wakes you up. You’re bored? A cup of tea will get you out of that doldrums. When it comes to socialising, friends getting together or relatives getting together, the cup of tea connotes the sort of idea that you’re going to be energised and you will therefore be able to talk about things, discuss things.
I think for the Bengali at least, probably for the rest of India, with tea and coffee, caffeine was an eye-opening thing. That you could just have a drink, which was not water, which was not the forbidden alcohol, and still have the that physical enjoyment from drinking it… I feel that Bengali social life would be very different if tea didn’t exist. A cup of tea and a couple of biscuits would be a very standard gesture of hospitality.
Aravinda: Kolkata is also famous for lebu cha, the lemon tea spiced with black salt — how did that come about?
Chitrita: I have really asked a lot of people about it and nobody’s been able to give me a good answer. And again, I feel that there must be many, many people who hate the taste of milk. And yet, do want to drink tea. And some enterprising person came up with this idea, that, make the tea put in lime juice, some salt, some rock salt and it’ll just become something different yet it will be a cup of tea. Also remember, for most of these tea sellers, they operate without a refrigerator. So it’s very hard to keep the milk without spoiling. They have to keep boiling it, repeat the boiling, and that definitely changes the taste of the milk along with the tea to which they will add it. And, if it’s not very good quality tea, it will not taste so good by itself.
But quite apart from that, the lime juice and the funny spices that they add together, I think whoever came up with it, found that it was working and then maybe, others took it up too. In Bengal, if you ask people, who invented the rossagolla, there’s always this very clear answer: Nobin Chandra Das. I don’t think there is an inventor of lebu cha. I think it’s a sort of serendipitous happening that came from experimentation, and it took because it’s easy to make and also Bengalis do have a spicy palate.
We very rarely think of the snacks that we have with tea. They are not overly sweet things, they are salty things. The samosas are there, muri (puffed rice) is a very big thing. And muri is dressed up with tiny boiled potatoes, chickpeas and other ground spices to make it A really spicy concoction. So I think the natural proclivity for spices made the lebu cha very easy to popularise once somebody had come up with it.
Aravinda: Does one eat plain muri or is it always dressed up?
Chitrita: Even if you’re having it at home, the muri served with tea in the afternoon would be dressed up but minimally, with a bit of salt, and the other Bengali favourite, mustard oil, and chopped green chilies. That would be the very standard way of having muri with tea at home. Nothing fancy, no cooking skills required. Mustard oil by itself is a real palate a tingling element. A little bit of that and then you have the tea and the two different tastes really make it, at least for a Bengali, a favourite kind of a combination.
Aravinda: There’s a story about your Sanskrit tutor and muri that I remember. Would you mind sharing that story here?
Chitrita: So, the Sanskrit teacher. He was a funny guy. First of all, he loved food, so whatever my mother gave him, he would just gobble it up. But every day, she didn’t have sweets and things to give him. And on those days, he’d just say, “Didi, just give me some plain muri with the tea.”
The very first time she did it, I was amazed that instead of taking the muri and eating it and then having tea, he just poured some of it into the cup. And I remember saying, what are you doing? He ignored me, picked up this cup of hot tea and just slurped it. And he must have had a great deal of practice with his tongue because when he put the cup down again, I saw all the muri that he had put in had disappeared. Again, he picked up some more muri, put it in there, slurp, slurp, all the muri is gone. I don’t know how he did it.
There is this particular Bengali habit, I am not sure that I have seen it in the rest of India. Generally this custom today of serving tea in mugs did not exist say 30, 40 years ago. It was always cup and saucer. And one of the ways that some Bengali seem to like is pouring tea into the saucer and then slurping it from the saucer. I think my father would have been appalled, but I have seen so many people do it. I even asked some people why and they said, it’s a good way to cool the tea. Why not blow on it or wait a little bit, I asked. And they’d say, no, no, no, then it becomes too cold. So apparently there is some magic temperature that the drinker can achieve by pouring tea into that little saucer and then slurping it from the saucer. I found it extremely difficult to think of you’re doing it myself. I’ve never tried it but that is also a very Bengali characteristic.
Aravinda: Where did your father buy his tea?
Chitrita: The kind of places say where my father used to go and buy tea, those little corner tea shops that every neighbourhood had, they would just have tea chests. You bought your tea leaf or tea dust, you went home and made your tea. Those stores are hardly to be seen because big companies are now selling packaged teas and those packages you can buy in the grocery store. This whole intimacy that my father experienced with this tea seller… the discussion would be like, “This came in today, would you like to try that?” or “I’ve been waiting for a particular kind of tea to come and I will tell you when it does.” Or my father would say, “The last time you talked me into buying that tea and it was very disappointing, very bland. I’m not going to listen to you anymore.” And then, then tea seller would always say, “Ah, why are you getting so impatient? Once in a while a man makes mistakes. Don’t write me off. I have lots of good suggestions for you coming.” They’ll go back and forth about this there was a personal quality too the acquisition of the tea, which now does not exist. I wonder how much that has reduced the enjoyment of tea among people.
Aravinda: From the outside, looking at Calcutta and Bengali society, it feels like tea is a big part of the social fabric, seen also in the books and films from here? Nowhere else do I see tea almost as a motif of a culture. Am I assuming a larger significance than there is?
Chitrita: I don’t think so. I think socializing and tea are inextricably linked in Bengali and has been for a long time. And so laterally that is reflected… In films we will see people getting together drinking tea, and also let us say, the more lighter of literary works, for instance, detective stories. The Bengali detective always drinks, tea. Like Sherlock Holmes and his pipe, the Bengali detective has to have his tea and cigarettes. There’s one very famous Bengali detective called Byomkesh and he has also a sidekick, Ajit, like Sherlock Holmes’ Watson, he has Ajit. So these two live together, they share a flat and Byomkesh deals with the mysteries while Ajit is the helper,. Many times in these stories you will have this description of Byomkesh picking up a cup of tea that is absolutely steaming and taking a long satisfying sip from it, and then a big puff on the cigarette.
This is something that has been generated over the years. Again, it is gradual but it is absolutely imprinted on the Bengali psyche. Bengalis also associate tea with thinking apart from everything else. Byomkesh is a thinking detective. He sits at home. He thinks things through and solves the mystery and tea is what helps him do that. The cigarettes also help I’m sure.
An even more famous cerebral, tea-loving detective is Feluda, created by the great film director Satyajit Ray. Feluda is almost as much a Bengali icon as Ray. And he is most particular about his tea. Very superior Darjeeling is what he insists on. And his favourite snack to accompany the afternoon cuppa is dalmoot which he gets made up according to his preference at a little shop called Kalimuddin’s, in Calcutta’s New Market. I was the first person to translate four of the Feluda novels into English, and I worked with Mr. Ray over several months. I noticed that Feluda’s tea preference was modelled on his own.
Aravinda: How many cups of tea do you drink in a day?
Chitrita: I have kind of cut down a bit. I used to drink four cups of tea a day, and now I have that down to only two. So partly because, you know, getting older, sleeping problems. I have my morning cup of tea and then I have one at 4 or 4.30. That changes when I go to Calcutta and I’m visiting friends and sometimes, I visit them at odd hours. But they will ask, “Cha kori?” And I always say Yes. To hell with sleep.
My neighbors in Calcutta are a couple in their late 70s, early 80s. And they are avid tea drinkers. When I visit, they will invite me in, go off to put the kettle on. They’re not my family, they’re not friends but I can’t tell you how many cups of tea I’ve enjoyed with them. Ashima is a little bit like my father. She will call me and say, “I found this new kind of tea which I think is really good. And I want to try it out with you.” It’s really wonderful to have her think of me when she’s got this special kind of tea.
Aravinda: Away from Kolkata, was tea hard to find?
Chitrita: Living in America, I have learned to really like a tea that probably my father wouldn’t like – Earl Grey tea. He’d probably say, what is all this perfume stuff? Had he been alive I would probably keep it a secret.
My first husband was from Bangladesh and I lived in Bangladesh for some years. And over there again for, well, partly because it was post-war, for a long time, things were very topsy turvy, things were hard to get. I found that the culture of tea existed in the same way that it did in West Bengal but the quality of tea was never going to be that great because Darjeeling just didn’t exist.
A lot of people I knew there – those who could afford it – would make these trips to Calcutta. For shopping. For two things, sarees and tea. If I visited them after their return, they would always make sure to offer me some Calcutta tea.
Aravinda: Where do you get your Darjeeling from now?
Chitrita: I live in Cambridge a short distance from Harvard Square, there used to be a wonderful tea store called Tealuxe. They had the best quality teas from all over the world. For a long time I would just go and buy Darjeeling from them in packages.
They went out of business about three years ago. So for a while I just didn’t know what to do and I was dreading the thought that my stock would run out and then – I have to share this story – I had reconciled to the fact that I’ll just have to buy packaged teas… I have to have tea. And then I wrote the piece for you. Two or three months after that, I got a call from a friend – I had shared the story with my friend, an Armenian American – and she had shared the story with this guy, also an Armenian American who runs a tea company. He wants to meet you, she said. I said, okay and we fixed a meeting. He had asked to meet at a tiny little restaurant. It was not really proper restaurant, more like a sandwich shop/ coffee shop where a lot of students go. I turn up there and then this guy said I must have tea with you. I said, yes, but I don’t know what kind of tea these people have. These people are not important, but they let me do whatever I want here, he said. He had brought three kinds of tea and he said, I’m going to brew them in their kitchen and I’m going to serve tea to you.
He brought tea in three different cups and then asked me to taste and tell me which one I liked. I noticed that he did not offer me milk or sugar, it had to be the pure tea tastes that he wanted me to have. One of them was absolutely wonderful, very, very fragrant, beautiful Darjeeling tea. So he said, well, I’ll make a bigger packet of this and mail it to you as a present. And then I found that MEM Tea, his company actually did mail order sales. Now I buy tea from them. He’s now sold the company to a friend and has moved to Maine when he bought a farm and he grows wild flowers.
Aravinda: In a way I’m really surprised but I’m also in a way not. I find that tea seems to touch people in ways beyond any understanding. So have you been able to create a world around tea in Cambridge?
Chitrita: One of the things I miss here is that very few people here among my friends enjoy tea. That’s one of the things I miss greatly. When I go to Calcutta, it’s so different. All the friends that I meet, we would get together over tea, that whole kind of, you know, communal pleasure, surrounding the cup of tea, I have not been able to recapture in my American life. In my American life, I am the solo tea drinker. I am the tea drinker who’s still making it with great care and still enjoying it. But it is not an active, lively enjoyment with other people. It’s a reminiscent enjoyment. It’s an enjoyment probably with the past, it’s an enjoyment of a drink that takes me back to the past. I wish it could be different. That can only happen when I go to Calcutta again.
Charita Banerji (R) with a friend, at dinner in Kolkata. Photo by Amitava Guha.
Eat Your Books
Eat Your Books is a website that features Chitrita’s books. The site has indexed recipes from leading cookbooks and magazines as well recipes from the best food websites and blogs. Members can create your own personal ‘Bookshelf’. Imagine having a single searchable index of all your recipes – both digital and print!
