{"type":"rich","version":"1.0","provider_name":"Transistor","provider_url":"https://transistor.fm","author_name":"Gardens of Earthly Delight","title":"A Life Changing Cup Of Tea w/ Henrietta Lovell (Rare Tea Lady)","html":"","width":"100%","height":180,"duration":3800,"description":"Henrietta Lovell is the founder of Rare Tea Company and is known as the Rare Tea Lady. In the late 1990s, she was working in corporate finance, until a trip to China and a $50 pot of oolong changed everything. She fell in love with tea, not the industrial tea bag she grew up drinking in England, but tea crafted by farmers from specific places with terroir as complex as wine.\nFor over 20 years, she's worked directly with farmers who grow tea organically and regeneratively, paying them what their work is actually worth. She runs the Rare Charity, where tea communities decide how funds are used - primarily putting kids through university who would otherwise have no access to higher education. She supplies tea to Michelin-starred restaurants around the world and has built her entire life around the belief that if you look for great flavor and know where it comes from, you can change communities while filling your life with pleasure.\nI joined Henrietta at the Rare Tea Company headquarters in London where we enjoyed incredible teas on a rainy afternoon. We talk in depth about camellia sinensis (tea), how the British stole it from China and grew it across their empire, the exploitation built into most of the tea industry, the 15 million people working in tea and mostly living in poverty, organic farming versus certification, bed tea as a morning meditation, and making rhubarb fool in her grandmother's Scottish kitchen.\n\"Healthy soil is healthy mankind. It's not just us who drink the end product. It's the people who grow it and the communities around where it grows. It does matter.\"\nTIMESTAMPS00:00 - Falling in love with tea in China\n 03:15 - The $50 pot of oolong that changed everything\n 07:30 - Tea comes from one plant: Camellia sinensis\n 10:45 - How the British stole tea from China\n 15:20 - Corporate finance escape: \"I can't wait until retirement\"\n 18:40 - Starting Rare Tea Company with naivety and stupidity\n 22:15 - Meeting the first tea farmer in Fuding, China...","thumbnail_url":"https://img.transistorcdn.com/9EmmdNPFGH5KAwG2qiPUaQ3rRxt4jbBisODUISWHgaU/rs:fill:0:0:1/w:400/h:400/q:60/mb:500000/aHR0cHM6Ly9pbWct/dXBsb2FkLXByb2R1/Y3Rpb24udHJhbnNp/c3Rvci5mbS9jNDNl/MWFjOGI1NTdkZjll/ZTBjOGI5MDEzYWI0/ZjczOC5qcGc.webp","thumbnail_width":300,"thumbnail_height":300}