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tea shop owner traces ancestor's steps on Sri Lankan tea estate Augustus left a diary that included details of his years in the tea fields. But the diary had been lost for decades among family possessions, and it wasn't until recent years -- after Bill Waddington had opened his TeaSource store on Cleveland Avenue -- that he realized he had a tea connection with this adventurous ancestor. This fall, armed with the diary and its tales of the tea, Waddington made his annual buying trek to Sri Lanka. While examining orange pekoe tea and drying troughs, and selecting oolong and silvertip teas, he took time to find one of his great-grandfather's haunts: the Leangalvalla Estate in the southern mountains of the island nation, which is just off the southern tip of India and was once known as Ceylon. "They were very kind and showed me around the grounds, including the remains of an old building that may have been around in my great-grandfather's day. And I walked among plants that are direct descendants of plants he might have planted," Waddington said. (Tea growers replace their tea trees by taking cuttings of their best bushes. The trees, which are kept trimmed to a height of 3 to 4 feet, can produce good tea for 100 years.) It was unfortunate that during Waddington's visit Leangalvalla was processing leaves for tea bags, not the more exclusive loose tea leaves that he sells in St. Paul, so he didn't place an order. Tea
hunter Waddington, 49, said he's been a tea drinker all his life, and about 20 years ago realized that there must be some great teas in the world, the way that there are great olive oils and great wines and great cigars. He hunted for those teas. "I started contacting sources in the source countries and found that tea is the most civilized industry; here I am a guy from the Midwest contacting tea brokers in Calcutta to buy one pound of tea, and they respond and put me in touch with their friends and colleagues. "The more
I learned, the more I loved about the industry and the world of
tea." "Ten years ago it occurred to me that other folks need to taste these great teas; that proselytizing spirit, combined with a growing entrepreneurial bent, led to the tea store," he said. "I figured if others had a chance to taste these great teas, it would knock their socks off; they'd realize that compared to their old tea, this would be like putting a $100 bottle of Merlot next to a box of Boone's Farm." He ran the business from his house for two years before opening the Highland shop, and now he plans to open a second one in St. Anthony. Tea
connoisseur There are about 250 varieties of tea in his shop, and Waddington says he can identify almost any of them in a blind test. He's even got a strong tea, an aged Puerh , that is a good transition for coffee drinkers. "It has less caffeine but all the body of a good cup of coffee, with no acidity. And it's as strong as Lutheran-church-basement-potluck coffee," he said. He and his staff taste 40 to 60 samples a week during the growing season, from March to October, before deciding which to order. Most are shipped in traditional tea chests, not much different from those thrown into Boston Harbor in 1773. It's repackaged in the shop, usually into quarter-pound packets, which can brew dozens of cups. The mechanics and artistry of growing, selling and brewing tea remain a delight to Waddington, who marvels at the fact that he even embarked on this tea-tasting odyssey. "I'm not
sure how I even got started; my parents didn't drink tea, but my
grandmother did. It was probably Lipton's," he said. |
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Copyright © 2001 Wijeya Newspapers Ltd. All rights reserved. |
Bill
Waddington, the Tea Man of St. Paul's Highland Park, sipped from
the cup of family history on a recent international tea-buying trip.
A quest for new and interesting leaves led the modern-day tea merchant
to Sri Lanka, where his great-grandfather, Augustus Waddington,
had worked in the 1860s, clearing land for plantations and supervising
tea harvests before settling in the United States.
