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A LIFE IN TEA continued from page 41 pu-erhs. That person might be comparing coffee to chamomile or raspberry leaf. I've changed so many coffee drinkers to coffee and tea drinkers. We don't promote that you should stop drinking coffee; that's not our motive. Our motive is: If you enjoy coffee and you like that flavor profile, let us give you something we think you'll also appreciate. Perhaps if you've become sensi- tive to caffeine, we'll give you something that works better for your system. At the border of Myanmar and China, Chawla visits a remote tea garden home to the big-leaf Dayeh varietal. a sizable tea company with an influence out there, you are jading the marketplace. You're confusing the consumer. Unless companies stop doing that—and they don't stop currently because there is no overriding set of guidelines or principles that check them from calling a hibiscus flower "tea"—then you won't have an educated consumer. It's a systemic problem. Some of the problems that the tea industry faces are created by the industry itself. If you had a few large companies suddenly abandon calling certain things "tea," you'd have a radical change in the tea industry. Q: What's your approach when it comes to serving tea in the café? A: Tea can be done in a number of ways; it doesn't have to have a particular style. It follows whatever the host wants to do, and teahouses reflect the personality of the host. Our perspective on tea is that if you want to drink it out of a salsa jar, that's great. We don't believe you need the perfect teapot for the certain perfect number of minutes to make a cup of tea. For us, tea is more of an internal process where you're connected to that source. For me, when I drink tea, I'm drinking a particular person's tea from a particular region. It transports me to that place. Q: 42 Are tea drinkers and coffee drinkers two different sets of people, or can they overlap? When you have a consumer who says, "I'm a coffee drinker and tea doesn't really do it for me," that consumer is likely not comparing coffee to dark Yunnan blacks or dark A: Tea Almanac 2013 A: Q: How do you feel about the future of specialty tea? Right now, a lot of chains are offering flavored tea and calling it specialty tea. The aspect of how you define "spe- cialty" is up for grabs right now. I think specialty doesn't really exist in the vocabulary inside my company. We feel that the peo- ple are special—those artisans who are still making tea old style and have been doing it for a long time. They are specialty. For specialty to grow in the U.S., companies have to focus on that aspect. If tea is just growing in terms of the number of stores out there, I don't consider that a growth in specialty tea. That's a growth in tea, but not specialty tea. The industry is growing, but its growth is very unfocused in my opinion. There are too many teas out there. A specialty coffee roaster doesn't offer more than 20 or 25 different kinds of coffee. But some tea companies offer 150, 200 or even 500 teas. Q: A: And what do you see as the future of The Tao of Tea? Because this is our 15th year, we're doing a little soul- searching and wondering how we can become even better. One of our models is going to be to do more with less. Right now we offer 65 to 75 pure varietal teas, and we're going to lower that to 30 to 35. We want to offer just those special teas, and we want to offer them seasonally. For example, I think we'll be a better company if we offer first-flush Darjeeling—which is grown and harvested in April—only for the months of April, May and June. Then we will be a specialty tea company. For more from this interview—including Chawla discussing the com- pany's RTD line—visit freshcup.com for a Web-exclusive article.