Peachy's Pantry: Steven Smith Teamaker Recommended by Whom You Know.
Tea for two, and two for tea; what could be better in Manhattan than a nice hot cup of tea in February? Thank goodness we have found Steven Smith, teamaker. His exquisite teas are just the thing to warm up your mornings. We especially love the Brahmin's Choice: Full Leaf Indian Assam, Select Ceylon and China Black teas Blend No. 18. Peachy Deegan is on quite the spoonbender.
Steven Smith has spent more than 35 years as an entrepreneur, primarily in the food and beverage industry. In 1971 as a bushy haired manager of the first natural foods shop in Portland Sunshine Natural Foods, Steve introduced organic and natural products to the local community. Sunshine had an annex called The Gates of Eden which was an herb shop that sold medicinal and beverage herbs. Here you could find Steve or the other partners blending up all sorts of herbal concoctions for all sorts of maladies.
Expanding from those roots, Steve co-founded Stash Tea Company with two partners in 1972. The trio introduced herbal and specialty black teas to retail shops, restaurants and college book stores throughout North America. It is here that Steve began formulating teas not for their medicinal qualities, but that really tasted good. During that time Steve also began dabbling in harvesting and trading vast quantities of locally collected and farmed herbs from the Northwest - Oregon grape root, cascara bark, red clover blossoms and Peppermint leaves.
Stash Tea Company was eventually acquired by Yamamotoyama, the oldest tea company in Japan in 1993, and Steve left to create Tazo Tea Company in January 1994. Fueled by the success of Stash Tea, Steve set out to upgrade the tea experience on a fundamental level by creating a unique tea brand based upon artful blending using only the highest-quality teas and botanicals. Working in his kitchen, often in his bathrobe and slippers, Steve sought to create a tea that would stimulate fresh interest among consumers with packaging and a point of view different from anything seen in the tea category before. By blending the myth and history of tea cultures throughout time with a unique sense of humor, Tazo captured the imagination, and palate, of consumers.
Ultimately Tazo was sold to Starbucks and while Steve continued to lead the creative development, being part of a larger organization had its unique challenges. For one, instigating unique projects and products that connected early Tazo consumers to the brand took a back seat to ramping up production for 10,000 stores to introduce the brand to a whole new set of consumers. Steve became restless and left the company he founded in January of 2007, moving to Provence in southern France to test out his high school French, learn how to wear scarves correctly and savor the two hour lunch.
While in Provence Steve met many small artisan producers of cheese, chocolate and wine and other specialty foods and determined that he would revisit his love of tea and create an, intimate company that specialized in small batch blended and varietal teas. Today, Steve and his small team blend rare and exotic full leaf tea leaves, flowers and herbs in tiny 30 lb batches and pack the freshest tea imaginable. In an “open Kitchen” environment in an old blacksmith shop in Portland, Oregon, you can witness tea being blended and packaged every day while enjoying a pot of the tea of the moment – the tea that is currently being blended.
When you get your hands on a package of Smith you’ll learn where each ingredient in each blend tea you drink comes from and when it was harvested by visiting www.smithtea.com and logging the batch number on the bottom of the carton into the website. It is something we are only too happy to share and is about as close to origin as you can get without the shots and the visas.
