| .
TEA AUTEUR:
-- James Norwood Pratt --
(from Tea Time Magazine - MAY/JUNE 2006)
Intrepid by nature and sure in style, author James Norwood Pratt is a man with a mission: to discover and share with others the Tao of tea.
James Norwood Pratt is a man of great nuance, of mood, and perhaps even a bit of mystery. A conversation with the renowned tea author is likely to reveal both much and little about him: his interests, his impressive scope of knowledge on an array of topics, and, naturally, his steadfast love and appreciation of tea.
At conversation's end, the listener is likely to be left with the unmistakable impression that he or she knows more than they previously did about tea-its leaf and lore, its lasting impact on virtually every culture in the world, and a slew of anecdotes about the beverage's considerable, and often scandalous, history. In fact, if the author's distinct laugh-more chortle than chuckle-is any indicator, one is quite convinced it is the turpitude of tea that most fascinates "Norwood Pratt," as he prefers to be called.
One of the first Americans to appreciate tea, let alone publish essays, articles, and books on the subject, Norwood Pratt has, over time, gained the respect of not only his readers, but also his peers. His accolades include serving as honorary director of the first traditional Chinese teahouse in America, in helping to create the American Premium Tea Institute, and in helping to pave the way for a cultural and commercial renaissance in the American tea industry. These things one can learn in a single exchange with Norwood Pratt.
What very well may remain unanswered, however, is a multitude of questions about the author himself. Who is the man behind the pen, exactly? It becomes quickly apparent this curiosity is likely to pique with out ever being fully satisfied. Norwood Pratt is, quite clearly, a complex man with many layers, and delving into one only seems to lead to the next. Even his accent is difficult to pin down.
For the sake of TeaTime and its readers, however, the man behind the curtain, who once wrote that tea is "medicine, beverage, currency and communion, the wellspring of empires, industries, and art," has agreed to come forward and reveal a bit about both himself and his life's work.
q. Can you tell our readers a few details about your personal and professional beginnings?
a. I was born to a perfectly respectable “old family” in North Carolina. The land outside Winston-Salem that we grew up on had actually been in the family since before the American Revolution. I am the opposite of rootless… no wonder I was restless. I went to university at Chapel Hill and in between times, spent a year in Europe and anotherin New York, and finally in 1965, I went to San Francisco where I still live. By the age of 30 in 1971, I had published a book on the wines of California. It was titled The Wine
Bibber’s Bible and it enjoyed considerable success.
q. You are lauded by critics and peers as one of the world's leading experts on tea. What initially sparked your interest?
a. By 1980, I began transferring my focus from wine to tea. From the first, I discovered how exactly the two parallel each other. Wine and tea are both agricultural products that, at best, aspire to art. The same factors go into creating them and enjoying them. After 25 years of tea experience, I now know that wine in Europe and tea in Asia even have parallel histories. But when I first got interested, nobody in America seemed to know much about tea. There had not been a serious book on the subject in almost 50 years, and the tea bag reigned supreme when the first edition of my Tea Lover's Treasury was published in 1982. Even the names of teas were unknown. When a professor whohad me to tea at Chapel Hill asked, “Are you a Darjeeling man?" I immediately replied “Oh, no sir-I'm from Forsyth County." All Southerners grow up thinking of iced tea as a major food group, but for generations we believed the only choice was between sweetened and unsweetened. I made friends with tea merchants Karen and Augie Techeira at Freed's in San Francisco, and in time they introduced me to their importer, Mike Spillane, of "G. S. Haly Company. They were my first tea gurus and I took notes.
q. What changes have you witnessed in the American tea culture since your first forays into the study and appreciation of tea
a. Let me tell you, I can bear witness to “the tale of the tribe"- the story of how tea came to this country in our time. The first Tea Lover's Treasury in 1982 listed only 10 or 12 U.S. "specialty” tea companies; by 2002 there were ten or twelve hundred, not counting the tea rooms that had begun appearing across the country at a rate of almost one a day. In this 20-year period, total U.S. tea sales grew from under half a billion to around six billion dollars per year. Great oaks from tiny acorns grow, but this growth was phenomenal.
q. Tell us a little about the American Premium Tea Institute and your role in creating it.
a. At one point, there were not many Americans who were able to answer questions of the kind that people began asking about tea, and it was all carried on rather like underground networking. I recommended to Mike Spillane that we form a trade association for the purpose of educating both the specialty tea trade and tea consumers. Our organization was christened the American Premium Tea Institute, which became APTI for short. Wewanted a trade association to promote the interests of all the small tea businesses. Maybe the best thing organizing APTI accomplished was waking up the Tea Association of
the U.S.A. to this burgeoning niche market.
q. What is your best advice for neophyte tea lovers?
a. Drink lots of different teas lots of different ways. Just keep drinking and see if you still feel the same way about (a certain tea) the next month.
q. Finally, one of tea's most interesting and complex virtues seems to be the sense of tradition and community it inspires. What, in your opinion, gives such a simple beverage such power?
a. The secret of tea is this: the spirit that inhabits the plant and it enters us when we imbibe it.
|
