At his Louisville home in a room done in minimalist Japanese Style, tea-tasting facilitator Rohit Wason sits cross-legged on a round meditation pillow across from guests Jen Hankee and Frank Puc. At this tea ceremony, Wason pours each of them a cup of Oolong tea.
“Since we are drinking several teas, I’ll ask that the first cup of this tea we can enjoy in silence. That way we are present with the touch and the feel and the smell of the tea. Of course, after the first cup is over, we will continue our wonderful conversations. The second thing is slurping. It is a very common thing to do in Chinese and Japanese food cultures. I will be slurping, but I want to give you a heads up. And if you always wanted to practice slurping but were afraid to do so, this will be a good place to practice,” explains Wason.
“What is the effect that has? Why is that encouraged?” asked Frank.
“I will invite you to try and see if you find the difference first, and see what you think. Is that ok?” asked Wason.
Tea ceremonies date back thousands of years, and there are numerous variations. Wason has been offering tea-tasting sessions for four years. His sessions last from 90 minutes to three hours and are inspired by a traditional Chinese tea ceremony known as Gong fu.
“Gong fu literally means skillful. So, it is a skillful way of doing something. It’s the same word as Kung-Fu, the martial art. So, in this case, what I’m doing is I’m channeling the energy of tea skillfully, hopefully skillfully by sitting with other people. I will steep the teas in my way, in a slow, mindful movement. We will have several teas today. We will steep all of them many times, which takes time. Time is one of the biggest ingredients of a tea ceremony, which we don’t have enough of these days,” said Wason.
People come from all walks of life to experience a tea ceremony at Wason’s home, which he refers to as Shelby’s Tea House. Wason teaches high school math during the day and hosts guests for tea ceremonies on weekends and evenings. He enjoys the teaching component of the tea ceremony, where he talks about the different teas and the ritual of preparing the teapot and cups.
”So, we’re just giving our utensils a little wash or a bath. That teapot, the clay that is unglazed is a very common thing in the Chinese tea ceremony of Gong fu," said Wason.
The three tea drinkers each hold their small white cups with two hands while they slurp the tea. The tea taster explains that slurping is done intentionally and enhances the tea’s flavor. Wason: “When you ingest it and if you exhale through your mouth, there’s almost a lingering aroma that you can pick up,” said Wason.
Wason hosts up to 6 ceremonies a month. On this day, Jen and Frank are traveling from Chicago to Greenville, South Carolina. The couple said this experience has been peaceful and eye-opening.
“The knowledge is really wonderful and the teas taste great,” reported Jen.
” The whole experience is, I’m going to use the word, Zen-like,” said Frank.
In Danville, historian and tea expert Bruce Richardson welcomes me to his family tea shop, where more than 150 teas line the walls. The 72-year-old has been educating people worldwide about tea for more than 3 decades.
“You know, tea sales in the United States are approaching 15 billion dollars. We’re talking about loose-leaf gourmet sourced teas,” explained Richardson.
Richardson has written numerous books on tea, he’s the contributing editor for Tea Time Magazine and the Tea Master for the Boston Tea Party Ships Museum. With his background in music and his interest in art, Richardson said, he has a real empathy for the creative process of blending teas.
“So for instance, the Cincinnati Art Museum comes to us when they have an exhibit going on and say produce a tea for us. The Georgia O’Keeffe Museum out in Santa Fe, we design all the teas for them. The Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, Peabody Essex Museum there. The British collection at Yale, we designed all the teas for them,” said Richardson.
He travels to places like China, Sri Lanka, Japan, and India to meet with tea farmers.
He recalls going to Japan, being about 3000 feet up on a mountain in Japan, having tea with a man who had produced the best green tea in the world 3 years in a row.
“We went into his house, which is a 400-year-old Japanese house, and he made tea for me. We don’t have to talk. He sees how my eyes are reacting, how I nod my head. He sees how I sniff the tea. At that point, we are speaking in a much deeper relationship than anybody who is speaking in a common language. We are actually communing over that tea that he has made, and I know exactly why that tea was chosen as the world’s best,” said Richardson.
This tea master calls tea a cup of humanity.
**Public Media funding is under threat. You can help! Join WEKU's 1850 campaign for the future! 1,850 new supporters, each giving $10 monthly to keep WEKU strong. Donate today!
