Interview with Tyler Gage of Runa Guayusa

http://www.runa.org/

What was it that first drew you to Ecuador? How was it you came across Guayusa and the Kichwa people who have traditionally cultivated it?

Originally I went to Latin America to research native languages, but while I was working with indigenous communities in Ecuador, Peru, and Brazil I witnessed firsthand the tradeoff indigenous communities face: while they want to preserve their cultural heritage, they also experience an immediate need to feed their families and earn cash in an increasingly globalized world.  The indigenous communities also shared an ancestral tea they consume every morning while sitting around the fire as a community: guayusa.  Together, we began imagining how a Fair Trade business could share this rich-tasting tea with a global audience, and pioneer a proactive and culturally valuable way for the Kichwa people to participate in the global economy

What does Guayusa mean to you?

Discovery & Hope.

Discovery in the sense that guayusa allows consumers to discover a new tea-origin and a new culturally heritage around leaves in hot water.

Hope that indigenous traditions will not be lost and that our global communities appreciates and enjoys this rich tradition.

Would you mind sharing a story or experience with the Kichwa people you feel describes their cultural personality?

About a year ago I was with Carlos Mamallacta’s family and a group of our investors who came to meet the farmers and better understand Runa. One of our particularly socially conscious investors, Patrick, asked Carlos, “I understand extra income is nice, but what do really you [sic] think about a bunch of white dudes coming and taking your guayusa, exporting it, and having random white people who might not care about your culture drinking this stuff?”  Carlos thought about it for a second, and simply responded, “Everyone should drink guayusa.” Obviously unsatisfied but what he perceived to be Carlos’s PC response, Patrick poked further, “Riiight, but your people appreciate guayusa in a certain way, and now these stupid white people are drinking it in tea cups. That doesn’t bother you?” Carlos thought about it again, “Well, everyone should drink guayusa.” Then they both smiled.

“Everyone should drink guayusa.”

Carlos actually understood the question quite well, and his answer reflects the fact that sharing and exchang[ing] our core tenets of the Kichwa culture, and guayusa is seen as a gift for all of humanity. They see guayusa as being healthy for people’s bodies and minds, not just Kichwa people’s bodies and minds. Moreover, part of what it means to be Kichwa to them is to know and appreciate other cultures, and guayusa is now serving as a new point of contact to spark these kinds of exchanges.

Tell me about the motivations behind the non-profit Runa Foundation?

While our for-profit companies provide the supply chain a market for guayusa, our non-profit arm, Fundación Runa provides tools and resources to indigenous communities and farmers’ associations working towards their vision of sustainable development in the Amazon. We focus on three core areas: social empowerment, community development, and environmental management.

We provide technical assistance to small farming families to grow guayusa in organic agroforestry systems, and by purchasing guayusa at a guaranteed minimum price, creating economic incentives for sustainable management of natural resources and rainforest conservation.

Aside from Guayusa what would you say is your personal standby tea?

I drink a good amount of Taiwanese Oolongs in the afternoons, in addition to silver needle white tea on the weekends.

Do you look up to anyone in the tea industry?

Tom Lisicki, the CEO of Stash, has been an incredibly generous industry friend to us, and I’m very impressed by how he has built Stash and continues to run their company.  He’s helped bring more premium tea to the masses, and maintained great quality products as a big company.

Are you drawn to the personality of the Ecuadorian people in particular or do other cultures interest you?

The Amazon holds a big part of my heart, but I would also consider myself of student of world cultures at large. I’ve always been fascinated by the dreaming traditions of Aboriginal and Tibetan peoples as well, and hope to travel more broadly as I “grow up” J

A Huge thanks goes out to Tyler Gage of Runa for spending the time to answer my questions!

Do you have any questions for Tyler? Would you like a followup Interview? Post your questions in the comments below!

Check out my coverage of both Day 1 and Day 3 of the 2011 World Tea Expo.

Day two of the 2011 World Tea Expo was spectacular! A couple presentations, a number of formal tastings, a private tasting and dinner with the Nepali delegation, Thomas Shu’s traditional Taiwanese Hakka Tea Songs and more! All packed into one wonderful day!

As fast as the day went for me, a lot happened this day between 10AM and 5:30PM. So let’s get started!

Day 2

Saturday morning I arrived a bit early for the show. I tend to do this each year. You never know who you’ll end up meeting at the Starbucks at the convention center over breakfast! I had a very nice chat with one of the new girls over at Runa. Runa makes and wholesales the wonderful Guayusa (why-you-suh) product I reviewed a couple flavors for last fall. It’s an exciting tisane I really enjoy. After she had to get to the booth though, I took the chance to chat with a lady sitting behind me. Her name was Sharon Misdea and she’s a cultural anthropologist with a concentration on beverage history! How fascinating is that! My mind is still full of all kinds of questions to ask of her. I hope to do an interview to share with everyone here in a month or so!

After the breakfast chats were over, I headed out to the show floor. With the press badges you get in a bit early so I was able to squeeze through just a tad before the doors opened to everyone.

I was able to make a b-line for my friends over at QTrade Teas & Herbs who co-exhibit with my friends at Kopius Teas at the expo. These are some fantastic people who custom blend for all sorts of brands. If you have a chance to check out Infusions of Tea, it’s a brand run by Ron Eng and Emilie Yanagi of Kopius Teas and they have some very nice, high quality stuff!

Sungarden Teas

Elmwood Inn across the way was next. They’re more ‘local’ to me, being right across the river in Kentucky so I thought I’d say hello. I had a nice conversation, contemplated snagging a couple books including a beautiful copy of their illustrated version of Okakura Kakuzo’s “The Book of Tea,” and headed on down the isle.

Next, I made a stop over at Art of Tea. These guys are really some master blenders. Some of their teas are really inventive. Just after the show I’d requested a blend with Kiwi for kicks, and they blended a new Watermelon Kiwi Black Tea I am hoping to review here soon!

I didn’t spend a lot of time back in the China part of aisle 3. There was some stuff there which looked and smelled nice, but I had the urge to check out the Taiwan Tea Association booth where a lot of activity seemed to be centered. Here I found the venerable Thomas Shu singing some of his renowned Hakka Tea Songs. These were pretty engaging and fun to learn, though I really don’t remember them at the moment (BAD Tea-Guy!). They had a beautiful booth and I took the time to sit in on a presentation on traceability with Taiwanese teas and on a couple cuppings of Taiwanese teas which were both very engaging and fun!

Thomas Shu, Steven Huang and I

From the Taiwan tea booth, I made my way to a nearby booth from CTC Inc, distributors of the Bret brewing device and of Zealong, the New Zealand Oolong tea introduced at last year’s show. I snagged a Brewt unit I’ll be pitting against Adagio Teas’ ingenuiTEA and Teavana’s PerfecTEA Maker II in a couple weeks.

The Taiwan Tea crew and a buyer

The Taiwan Tea crew and I

I also made my way to the booth for Royal Tea of Kenya who had some unworldly spectacular orthodox black, green and white teas. What’s special about this is that Kenya isn’t really known for their quality, primarily their quantity. They’re the single largest producer of black teas in the world. Kenya produces more than China and India and Sri Lanka. It’s unbelievable. What’s great about this is that we’re now seeing some really good quality stuff coming from a region which needs the agricultural income and the exposure. I’m very happy to see this quality increase from Kenyan teas, and  to see much needed attention on a region which could use it.

Royal Tea of Kenya

A stop over to Octavia Tea yielded some new friends as well. Some of their blends were pretty interesting, and I look forward to reviewing some of them soon.

The Octavia Tea crew and I

On the side opposite CTC was the ItoEn booth. ItoEn makes more bottled ices teas than anybody. They literally invented the modern game of bottling teas for consumer consumption. It’s a really great story, I hope to transcribe at some point. I’ve become annual friends with Rona Tison, their VP of marketing for North America over the years. She’s pretty fantastic, so if you ever have the chance to say hi, you should do so!

They have some really great new bottled teas out now too. Their Crisp Apple Iced Tea and their Mango Iced Tea taste fantastic! I’m set to receive some samples of ItoEn’s loose leaf teas as well and hope to review some of them soon.

Rona Tison of ItoEn and I

An aisle over and further back was The Tao of Tea (Tao is pronounced like dow.) This company has a single premise. Never compromise quality while protecting our people and resources. I am in love with this group and look forward to reviewing some of their teas.

Tao of Tea has a pretty large amount of shelf-space at a local international food market in my area called Jungle Jims. If you’re ever in the Cincinnati area, you should really check the place out. They have acres and acres of floorspace inside devoted to foods from around the world!

A buddy from Tao of Tea and I

Tao of Tea

I dropped by a booth for Harshita Designs, a wonderful Indian fashion designer who often incorporates tea related aspects into her work. Mr. James Norwood Pratt had his mug emblazoned on a poster celebrating some form of anniversary wearing one of the purveyor’s ties, so I obviously had to have one as well! I snagged a nice red tie with blue circles encompassing a pretty two-leaves-and-a-bud motif. It’s a pretty nice tie actually.

I moved on to the Joyce Chen booth where they had some nice teapots and other paraphernalia.

Harshita Designs

Joyce Chen

My friends over at Eastrise Trading Corp. always have great stuff. They’re the North American distributor for the Chinese brand called Foojoy. I know and like a number of Foojoy blends and am always impressed with their loose tea quality. Above all else though, I really love chatting with these folks. They’re a lot of fun, and I always learn something new.

From Eastrise I moved on to some adventurism! I took a trip to the last aisle and stopped by a neat little booth for a company called Indie Tea. This little brand has some interesting blends. At the show I was a fan of their “Dirty Bird” and “Masquerade” blends. I hope to give them a fair shake with some reviews down the line. India Tea donates a whopping 5% of their sales to charity. We as consumers might not tack that as a lot… but really, it is. It’s 1 of every twenty dollars the company doesn’t get to use for its own growth. CHeck them out if you can.

The Yedi Houseware booth was colorful and fun looking. I dropped by for a gander, but didn’t get to try anything out.

Yedi Housewares

The Yamashiro Busan Company of Japan has a neat product out this year as well. They’ve developed a cold-brew green tea powder which is actually very good. To brew, you take one of their pouches and insert it into a bottled water (after either draining or drinking a bit.) Then you put the cap back on and shake vigorously for a few moments. All the sudden, you have a fine tasting ices green tea in a bottle! FOr those familiar with the crystal light-to-go- packets, this is similar. However, you’re inserting a packet into the bottle, and not dumping a powder in directly. The idea is so new from the company, they don’t have a US facing site in English yet.

I hope to give these a review down the line as well.

To finish my day I headed upstairs to a private tasting of the Nepalese teas for this year. Here I met some wonderful industry luminaries such as Bill Waddington of TeaSource and NPR Tea Time fame. I also met  Martin Kushner and Chandra Bhushan Subba. The presentation given was very nice. They walked us through the history and culture of the relatively young Nepalese tea industry, some production processes and a tasting of some of their latest productions.

To say they had splendid teas would be benign. To be honest, one of their teas was just okay. Several were pretty good and two were downright spectacular. In particular I was impressed by an extra curled black tea produced by Bushan’s factory. For such a young industry, they’ve matured quite a bit in a very short period of time and are offering teas with a remarkable amount of differentiation in palate texture and flavor profiles on top of visual appeal. This is a country to watch!

Chandra Bhushan and I

Celebrating these differences can be complex, or simple. In the case of tea, the preparation, presentation and contents of the teas often offer a glimpse into the needs and attributes of a culture’s daily needs.

Today’s review is for Amazon Spice Guayusa (why-yu-sah). Not technically a tea, it comes from a holly plant in the Amazonian rainforest of Ecuador, and is being popularized rather quickly by Runa.

There are only a few things in this world which get me eagerly excited. One is definitely new Apple products. Having worked for them in the past makes me biased, I know. But there’s always been something fun about shiny new toys! Another is wonderful food and drink.

And finally, there’s people. I love people. I’d shout that from the rooftops. Sure, we can all be individually frustrating at times. But ultimately people are fascinating. Why we do what we do, the way we do it and the changes from one group of people to the next are ultimately fascinating to think about.

What possesses someone to pick the leaves of camelia sinensis or or ilex guayusa and poach them in hot water to drink the broth is probably lost to time, but still curious. Sure, we have our theories and stories of cultural myth and legend. Those are fun to tell, but ultimately don’t really give us the real answer.

Regardless of the mysteries behind steeping leaves, they do produce  wonderfully variegated flavors. Guayusa in particular is similar to yerba mate but without the bitterness. It’s naturally caffeinated and comes from a similar holly leaf plant.

Runa Guayusa Tea @ World Tea Expo 2010

At the 2010 World Tea Expo in Las Vegas I met the Runa team for the first time. Charlie Harding who formed the Runa Foundation was there touting this newfangled thing called Guayusa.

Daniel was kind enough to specially pack and send me some loose leaf samples of the four Guayusa flavors. But it should be noted that Runa only distributed bagged Guayusa at the time. You can now buy loose directly from them!

But enough about that, let’s dig in!.

Not only does guayusa come from a similar plant to yerba mate, but the leaves look very similar as well! Green and brown choppy and sharp edged leaves mix and mingle with blades of lemongrass and tiny cinnamon chunks for a simple but quality visual.

The aroma is pure and light. While the lemongrass exists, it’s more the cinnamon you catch in the scent. There’s the hint of mildly sweetened spice married to an attractive autumn grassy scent. This is true both brewed and dry.

Visually the liquor is light. Less red than expected, and much greener.

On the palate the brew is light and thin. There’s the spicy warmth of the cinnamon that’s present throughout with the a sour citrus twinge from the lemongrass. This combination is light and pleasant.

With how bitter yerba mate is, it’s boldness is striking. Guayusa on the other hand is very mild in comparison. I expected a much stronger brew, but was pleasantly surprised with a light sweet touch in the finish.

I don’t think a sweetener is warranted for this brew, but should you feel the necessity to lighten it up a bit, I recommend something simple and light.