Tony Gebely, a founder of the American Specialty Tea Alliance (ASTA), has been in the tea business for over thirteen years. He started off by importing tea, then blogging for the World of Tea (for which he won the Best Tea Blog award three times), working for the American Tea Room, and founding Tea Epicure. In June 2019 he organised the Tea Masters Cup finals at World Tea Expo in Las Vegas. Tony tells us about his Tea Masters Cup experience and where he thinks this movement could take the tea scene in America.

How did ASTA start?

ASTA is the result of the combined effort of Jordan G. Hardin from Alfred Teas, Suzette Hammond from Being Tea and me. We kept hearing over and over again that we need an association around speciality tea that supports tea business owners and helps their businesses grow. This was not created to compete with the Tea Association in the US; it’s to create a community, where people can interact in a non-competitive manner. We were just following the needs of our friends — tea business owners — who supported this idea and wanted us to do it. 

So we created ASTA just over a year ago. We haven’t done any marketing about it other than participating at World Tea Expo (WTE) and being involved with the Tea Masters Cup (TMC). The idea is really just to support the growth of speciality tea in America.

Tell us about the TMC. How did you get involved?

The TMC is an event that started off in Russia and focused on Eastern Europe. Having followed them for a while, I was amazed by the things the tea people do there, which is way beyond anything that we do here in America. I did an interview with some of the winners and was asked by one of the organisers to judge the international competition in China in 2017. That was when I saw how people create cocktails with tea, pair tea with food, make and taste tea in a way we don’t do here in the US. I think I would sum up their efforts as “what tea would look like if all tea snobbery was removed”. 

For example, Andrey Ivanov, one of the judges, had two beautiful teapots made by a Latvian artist. He brewed a different wulong in each one, then he poured one into the other, essentially mixing them up. Any tea snob in the US would say, “How can you mix those two beautiful teas!” But he was making this beautiful mixture of two beautiful wulongs while telling a story. 

Another individual took four Hario globes and stacked them on top of each other, each containing a different tea: four different darjeelings. They all descended down through each other and got mixed up. This, to me, is artistry and I wondered why we don’t have this in the US. The coffee culture is built around coffee art with a really strong barista scene. There are 30-year-old people who are still doing baristas as their main living, they are living the culture and are proud of it. It’s something we should look up to and try to foster in our own world. I think the TMC does it in a very good way. 

I was very keen to get involved and I managed to work with the founding brothers. TMC now takes place in 22 countries — some of them are so big and their tea culture so strong that they need to have regionals, whose winners then go to the nationals, and the winners of those go to the internationals. 

Adrienne Etkin Nascimento, winner of Tea Mixology US 2019, credit: @ritualmiami

What is the structure of the competition?

There are four parts: tea pairing, tea tasting, tea mixology and tea preparation. We only did two this year at WTE: tea mixology and preparation. There is just too much to do to support all four parts. A lot of countries do all four and of course the internationals do all four. The very exciting part about the internationals is that there are participants from many different countries, each bringing their own tea culture and flavours, making the experience extraordinary.

We brought it into the US as part of ASTA and it was very well received. We are going to do it next year, too, and we are hoping to work with the people from coffee and tea festivals, which are great starting points.

Michael Ortiz, winner of Tea Preparation US 2019, credit: @ritualmiami

How do you think the TMC could impact tea in America?

I think it is very important to modernise the scene. The rules in America are very strict, especially in the pu’er scene, and people like to stick with the old ways. There are, however, many new businesses who have to try new things to survive and are more open to innovation. Being snobbish about tea takes away the accessibility of tea and many get scared off. Relaxing the environment and not being afraid to experiment can only help the industry. 

Tea needs what coffee went through ten years ago. The TMC is a great force to enable this and thankfully the organisation is growing very fast and many new participants are joining. I have very high hopes for it to expand the tea culture and to reach new audiences.

WTE 2019: Michael Ortiz, Tony Gebely, Adrienne Etkin Nascimento, Sharyn Johnston, credit: @WTE

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Tony’s new tea book, The Philosophy of Tea, was published in September 2019 by the British Library as a part of the “Philosophy of” series that includes coffee, wine, and… beards. The book presents an introduction to the rise of tea to global prominence, exploring its origins in the Far East, the flavours and properties of the many varieties available today, and the rituals of tea preparation and enjoyment around the world. 

The US finals at WTE in June 2019 presented Adrienne Etkin Nascimento, co-founder and CEO of Admari Tea, as the winner of Tea Mixology. The winner of Tea Brewing was Michael Ortiz of JoJo Tea, whose interview was published in September 2019 in issue two of eighty degrees magazine.