Part 8:  BRANCHING STREAMS Tazo, Adagio, Rishi, MEM, Honest Tea, World Tea Expo By James Norwood Pratt As the cult of tea gathered steam, the market for tea continued to grow in all directions. Like the Second Coming, “the Starbucks of Tea” had been predicted for years by 1999, when Starbucks made its tea...

Part 7:  HEALTH & HAPPINESS By James Norwood Pratt The Tea News of the 1990’s was not that the Old Order changeth, it was that Tea is Good for Health, common knowledge in China since the time of Christ but now blessed, as if by Him, in the name of Science. Clinical research began...

Part 6:  PERSONAL JOURNEYS Imperial Tea Court, Silk Road Teas, Q-Trade, ABC Taiwan Teahouse, Brian Keating’s Sage Group Reports, APTI. Serendipitea, Barnes & Watson, East Indies By James Norwood Pratt My own tea education throughout the early 90’s was principally influenced by Devan Shah, Roy Fong and one or two others with a vocation...

Part 5: THE PACE QUICKENS Republic of Tea, Oregon Chai, Chez Panisse, Tea Magazine, Elmwood Inn Fine Teas, T Salon, Dushanbe, Teacup, Chado, Ching-Ching Cha, Teaism By James Norwood Pratt And in 1992 the Republic of Tea was brought into being by young Zentrepreneur Will Rosenzweig, with coaching and investment from his fellow tea...

Part 4:  NEW BLOOD & NEW BUSINESS Harney & Sons, Snapple, Upton Tea Imports, International Tea Importers By James Norwood Pratt John Harney, then new owner of a minuscule company he re-named Harney & Sons Fine Teas, claims that America’s Tea Renaissance began with the publication of  The Tea Lover’s Treasury and a letter...

James Norwood Pratt’s Modern American Tea History is a multi-part chronicle of the American Tea Renaissance. Foreword By George Jage In the modern American tea story, there have been many protagonists, visionaries, and champions, but through it all there has only been one true American tea laureate and that is James Norwood Pratt.  When...

How the Swans Came to the Lake An Eyewitness Account of America’s Tea Renaissance By James Norwood Pratt Prologue The United States is rapidly becoming a tea-consuming society, something we were not before now, just as the US has only become a wine-consuming society since the 1960’s. The adoption of tea as a routine...