In the late 1980s, when Sebastian Beckwith was a trekking guide in Bhutan and northern India, he fell in love with tea. Not long after, he and a few colleagues founded In Pursuit of Tea, a company developed to encourage knowledge of tea; sell high quality teas and all manner of associated utensils; and to encourage an ever-widening understanding of the world beyond the teabag.
Currently, Beckwith and a few others provide tea tastings on Wednesday afternoons at the Guggenheim Museum, from 1:30 to 5:30, free with museum admission. The tea program is presented as part of Tales of Our Time, an exhibition featuring nine newly commissioned works by artists born in mainland China, Hong Kong, or Taiwan. Beckwith frequently participates in public education programs about tea that have been held at sites including the American Museum of Natural History, the China Institute, and French Culinary Institute, as well as speaking before trade groups in the hospitality industry. Several times a year he travels to Japan, India, Taiwan, and Hong Kong to visit different tea producers to taste and learn.
Tea tastings at the Guggenheim Museum are offered every Wednesday, now through March 8, 2017.
“Tea is meant to be enjoyed,” Beckwith says. ”When we gather, it’s to drink tea and talk about it; there’s no ‘ceremony’ involved. The more you know about what you’re drinking, the greater your enjoyment. It’s not a snobbism thing; it’s a simple pleasure.”
During a recent Guggenheim tea drinking gathering, Beckwith pointed out some of the many misperceptions about tea and tea drinking. “It starts with the naming convention,” he says. "Often I hear, 'I like Darjeeling tea’ but that’s like saying, 'I like Italian red wine.' Darjeeling teas come from many gardens all over the region so that each one is different, just as wine from Tuscany comes from different growers whose wine is made of different kinds of grapes producing different styles of wine.”
Sebastian Beckwith, cofounder of In Pursuit of Tea
Fine teas can be infused several times using the same leaves with distinct changes to the color and taste at each infusion. Someone purchasing a fine tea for the first time would probably buy no more than two to four ounces, see how they like it, and move on from there. There is no one time of the day to drink a particular tea; some people opt for a stronger black tea that can handle milk and sugar in the morning, but this is entirely personal. It’s a good idea to buy fine tea from a company that turns inventory over fairly quickly to ensure freshness. As you buy, ask questions like “Where is this particular tea from?" and "What’s the specific name of the garden where it was grown?" If you don’t get an answer, search elsewhere.
In Pursuit of Tea began in 1999 to explore remote, traditional areas of production and find the finest teas available. Their loose-leaf teas are crafted with great care with most still picked and processed by hand. They are organically grown when possible largely by small farms or collectives. Beckwith's company offers several kinds of each tea variety: white matcha (Japanese powdered tea often used in the tea ceremony but just fine drunk without ritual); oolongs, which are gently rolled after picking to oxidize the leaf and deepen the flavor; and Pu-er, a post-fermented tea from China’s Yuen Province often packed into cakes or lengths of bamboo and others.
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