Today we’d like to introduce you to Nick Westbrook.
Nick, let’s start with your story. We’d love to hear how you got started and how the journey has been so far.
Ten years ago, I had a stroke of good fortune entirely by proximity — my best friend, Jordan, got a job at a high-end tea shop in Beverly Hills. Week by week, he would bring home hundreds of estate samples and bags of overstock that amounted to legitimate pounds of loose leaf tea; and not the dubious teabags I’d known my entire life… the good stuff, the stuff I never knew existed. Most fortunate of all, though, he took valuable time to pass on his growing knowledge of this vast, exciting and somewhat gated world of specialty tea.
I had always been a tea drinker, owing partly to my sensitivity to caffeine but also to my upbringing in the deep south, where there is rarely a gathering without a liter of sweet iced tea per capita. I had thought of myself as the genuine article when it came to being a lover of tea, but I’ve rarely been so humbled as when I took my first sip of silver needles. I’ll never forget the day.
“These are just the young buds of the tea plant, handpicked in early spring,” Jordan had said. “It’s the highest grade of white tea. Did you know it’s all the same plant? Green, black, white, oolong… it’s all made from the tea plant.” It sounded obvious, but no… I didn’t know that. Like many Americans, I assumed that the word tea referred to anything steeped and that green and black tea were made from different plants. As I continued to sip, I considered that I also didn’t know that tea could possess such rich flavor and depth of character. Did I know *anything* about tea?
As the answer was clear, so too was my renewed interest in tea. “Teach me everything,” I said.
Over the years, as I continued to discover specialty tea and identify with my passion for it, I began to share tea with close friends and coworkers. Then, while working as a bartender on the West Side, I began to prepare steeps from my private stash for my favorite regulars at the end of a meal, simply as a way of showing my gratitude for warmth and genuine human connection. What struck me was just how much people categorically enjoyed this experience of having good tea shared with them, learning a little bit about the history of the tea or the people who had grown it, and having some version of that same revelatory moment I’d had all those years ago: who knew tea could be this good?
What struck me most of all was how gratified I felt getting to be on the other end of that experience, being able to guide people into this world and pay forward that patience, passion, and knowledge that had been given to me. I’ve always felt incredibly grateful that my mentor in tea happened to be my best friend, and it’s that gratitude that really drove my vision for Huxbrook Tea. I wanted Huxbrook to be that friend that helps you get into something really fantastic in the best way, with patience and without pretension; someone with whom you can endlessly share your excitement and taste as it grows and evolves.
In the summer of 2019, I put together a killer custom tasting kit, set up accounts with my favorite importers of direct-source tea, and got to work on making Huxbrook Tea a reality.
Great, so let’s dig a little deeper into the story – has it been an easy path overall and if not, what were the challenges you’ve had to overcome?
There’s a number of challenges inherent to the concept of Huxbrook Tea and how it contrasts with the general perception of tea in America. With tea, there’s a ton to learn, but there’s almost as much that needs to be *un-learned*. There’s this near universal misconception that the word tea refers to anything steeped or infused, such as chamomile, mint, rooibos, valerian root, ginger, etc., but those things are not tea, those are herbals and botanicals, or tisanes, as they’re often referred to in other countries.
Imagine a world where we referred to every hot beverage as ‘coffee’. “I’ll have a chamomile coffee”, you’d say, or “I’m really craving a fresh mint coffee”. Hard to imagine, right? That’s the world that tea lives in. Its titular identity has been co-opted by literally every other consumable plant infusion on the face of the earth.
The facts are simple enough: true tea comes from the tea plant. But getting the facts straight on a massive scale is going to be another matter entirely. And that verbal distinction is going to have to be cleared up if we’re ever going to really embrace true tea in America, if it’s ever going to have a third wave, so to speak, the way coffee has recently, with the overall interest in a high-level coffee experience exploding, and now the focus on direct trade and sustainability.
But that’s why I’ve decided to source only pure, true tea through Huxbrook. It’s a little unheard of in the tea business to not offer botanical blends or scented tea, such as jasmine green or Earl Grey because they sell very well. I love jasmine green tea, but it’s what I call a “comfort zone tea”, and the whole idea of Huxbrook is to help people get out of that comfort zone. There’s literally thousands of styles of pure tea out there that comprise an unfathomable range of flavors and aromas, things that people put unbelievable skill and care into creating… There’s just no time to lose drinking the same old tea bags and blends. I’ve got a couple of friends in the tea business who think I’m crazy for only offering pure, unblended loose tea, but for me it’s a necessary risk. Such is my profound belief in the greater world of specialty tea and that people are ready to discover it, they just need a real opportunity to do so. It’s all about discovery and raising awareness.
One of my favorite ways to introduce people to pure tea is to do private tastings and tea parties. Unfortunately, I had to cancel and halt all tastings and events when the Covid-19 pandemic started, which has been difficult, but with some planning I’ve been able to do intimate/socially distanced private tastings recently, which I’m luckily able to do for people in their own homes.
Please tell us about Huxbrook Tea.
Simply put, my goal for Huxbrook Tea is to be the best all-around resource for helping people get into the vast, complex, wonderful world of specialty tea. Huxbrook was created to make this world more accessible and approachable than it’s ever been.
For me, the ultimate pride has always been in seeing and hearing that people’s lives have been improved, even in some small way, by the discovery of a better tea experience. I’ve seen it time and time again. Whether a person wants to move away from an over reliance on coffee, or they simply need more sustainable energy that helps them stay focused, or they have a hobbyists enthusiasm for discovering new flavors and learning about the many cultivars and techniques used all over the world. Whatever it is… Good tea really can meaningfully improve quality of life.
Setting Huxbrook apart from others has perhaps been easier than anything else because it’s so easy to identify what needs to be done better. Take a look at any tea assortment on almost any shelf — you’ll find very little transparency about cultivar, harvest date, elevation, or even origin, but you’ll find no shortage of meaningless marketing jargon — or tea babble, as I call it — such as “emerald grade”, “premium leaves”, or, my personal favorite, “expert picked” (as though every hard-working laborer who handpicks tea for a living isn’t an expert). There’s this ongoing disparity between branding and quality. In an industry with very little standardization, it’s as easy as it is tempting to fool unwitting consumers into thinking they’re already getting the premium experience. But in most cases, what they’re getting is a chichly designed package filled with mediocre tea. And how would they ever know the difference?
That’s exactly where Huxbrook comes in. Whereas many tea companies are content to follow the same old formula — sell the cheap stuff and blends to the average consumer, keep a few high-end things on hand for enthusiasts — Huxbrook exists to help average consumers *become* enthusiasts. And that is achieved by providing the resources and tools they actually need: proper steeping pots that allow whole leaves to fully open and be re-steeped, affordable, accurate digital scales for dosing tea correctly, industry-leading electric kettles that hold exact temperatures, and most importantly, a curated, affordable, discovery-driven subscription service.
It’s also been an important distinction to me that Huxbrook’s fundamental approach remains simple and decidedly a-cultural. Browsing through the many tea-centric profiles on social media, one would be forgiven for thinking one has to appropriate an East-Asian aesthetic for a proper tea experience — but thankfully this is not the case. Though tea has a rich history and has at times been adopted for elite, spiritual, or ceremonial purposes, its origins are quite humble. I encourage people to adopt whichever aesthetic or intent they like when enjoying tea. The hardworking farmers whose livelihoods depend on other’s enjoyment of tea want you to do just that — enjoy the tea. They don’t care if you have a bamboo tray or a clay pot shaped like a dragon or a porcelain gaiwan adorned with lotuses. This is a touchstone tenet of Huxbrook: it’s your personal ritual.
Do you look back particularly fondly on any memories from childhood?
There was a period of half a year or so when I was three when it was just me and my dad. He was between marriages and my mom was out of state, recovering from a traumatic car accident. I missed her terribly, but my dad rose to the occasion every day, sparing no amount of time for us to be together. One night, he woke me up in the middle of the night, apparently inspired and hungry, and asked me if I wanted to ride on his motorcycle to Waffle House. It might as well have been Disneyland. I had never gotten to wake up before morning and do anything exciting, let alone sit pressed against the gas tank of a Harley Davidson flying down country roads with cold wind making my eyes water as I marveled at colored lights on strange gauges, hurtling towards a fresh waffle. When we got there, I was so excited that I accidentally knocked my waffle onto the floor, where it landed perfectly upside down under the plate, saving the plate from breaking. I panicked a little, but all the waitresses swarmed in to tell me it was okay and that I could have another waffle, no big deal. A little redemption, even, how about that? What a good night it was.
Pricing:
- The Huxbrook Curated Subscription starts at just $15 per month, no strings attached
- Huxbrook offers free curated recommendations to anyone who takes the Tea Curation Survey at our website
- Gift boxes handmade in LA are available starting at $65
Contact Info:
- Website: Huxbrook.com
- Phone: 424-272-8691
- Email: [email protected]
- Instagram: instagram.com/huxbrooktea
- Facebook: facebook.com/huxbrooktea
Image Credit:
Nick Westbrook, Molly Posey Rossiter
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