A “Cuppa” Local Flavor

Louisiana’s First Tea Farm

DAVID BARRON WAS MORE THAN ready to retire. After owning and operating a successful machine shop for 25 years, he’d earned the chance to kick back and relax awhile. He certainly never saw himself pioneering a brandnew industry for the state of Louisiana. Yet, that’s exactly how his retirement is shaping up. And it all began with a chance encounter.

“I met Horticulturist Buddy Lee while I was having a tire repaired,” Barron said. “As we chatted and he told me about his work developing new varieties of plants, we realized we had a lot in common.” From that first meeting, the two men became good friends and when Barron purchased a tract of land in Amite, Lee made him an offer.

“My accountant recommended I invest the profits from the sale of my machine shop, and I decided on 160 wooded acres in Amite,” Barron said. “The idea was to harvest the timber and replant it, nothing more.”

For his research, Lee often purchases hundreds of trees then chooses only three or four to continue studying, leaving him with the surplus to discard. He asked his buddy, Barron, if he’d like some of the castoff trees and Barron thought, sure, why not.

“Every few weeks, Buddy would call and ask if I wanted this or that tree. I always said, ‘yes’ and he’d send me hundreds of them. Then, he asked if I wanted some tea plants. I’d been taking everything he offered but I said, ‘Wait, what do you mean tea plants? Does tea even grow in Louisiana?’ He sent me 1,000 tea plants (botanical name Camellia Sinensis Sinensis) and I stuck them in the only area I had left that was big enough to contain them.”

That was in 2017. The LSU Agricultural Department soon heard about Barron’s experiment, and they had the same question. “Will tea grow in Louisiana?” They applied for and received a grant to join him in his endeavor, monitoring his progress and advising him as the plants grew.

Just months after Barron planted his initial plants, South Louisiana experienced a late winter storm that dumped eight inches of snow, followed by an additional four. “I thought, well, so much for those tea plants,” he said. “But they pulled through with no problem. That January was the coldest one on record and that February was the hottest on record. None of that seemed to bother the plants.”

One challenge Barron did face was the high Louisiana water table. “Like any camellia, Sinensis Sinensis doesn’t like having wet feet,” he said. “Camellias breathe through their roots, and the roots on a mature tree can go six feet down. As we all know, six feet down around here is water. We’re still working on drainage solutions but, in the meantime, they’ve done very well. These trees originally grew in the understory. So, I’m keeping a lot of the pine trees and planting beneath them. The tea plants love the dappled light and the swaying motion of the pines.”

As Barron understands it, the original Camellia Sinensis Sinensis were gifted to Russians from China and planted near the Black Sea in the Republic of Georgia, the area most similar to where they’d been growing. Over the years, Russian horticulturists cultivated the plants to become more hot and cold-hearty. Apparently, it worked. These semi-tropical plants have handled anything our volatile South Louisiana weather has thrown at them, and Barron still has most of the original plants.

Barron added another 1,000 tea plants in 2019 and has since propagated an additional 500 from seed. The plants continue to thrive and in March of this year, The Fleur de Lis Tea Company harvested its first “flush” of tea leaves.

When I visited the farm, I was fortunate enough to taste the very first batch of Louisiana tea. With it, I received a crash course in growing, processing, preparing, and enjoying tea and was lucky enough to meet Beverly Wainwright, a tea consultant in town from Scotland to help Barron get his tea company off the ground. Wainwright has worked with dozens of small-scale tea companies around the globe doing just that, acting as a consultant and— according to Barron—so much more.

Wainwright is an encyclopedia of tea knowledge who has worked in the industry for over a decade, starting in Sri Lanka, garnering awards along the way. Barron heard about her from a friend at the Great Mississippi Tea Company in Brookhaven. Wainwright worked with them on their first flush in 2015 and the teas they created together won several awards at The Teas of the United States competition, in their very first year.

Tea consultant Beverly Wainwright.

Barron convinced Did You Know? Wainwright to add Louisiana The poker term “royal flush” has its to her rotation of tea origins in tea making. “The first flush of the tea companies with which she plants was always reserved for the royals,” said consults in such far-flung David Barron of The Fleur de Lis Tea Company. places as Myanmar, Wales, “It was illegal to pluck the field before the and Scotland, all while kings, queens, and nobles had those first running her own successful leaves harvested for their private tea reserves. company, The Scottish Tea The practice became known as ‘the royal flush’.” Factory. Wainwright stayed onsite at the Fleur de Lis farm for two months helping Barron process his first teas, will be back periodically to monitor his progress, and remains available to him through Zoom in the meantime. “Our goal is not to copy what someone else has done but to create a Louisiana tea, to develop flavors and processing methods that suit these plants and this ‘terroir’, to make something uniquely Louisiana,” Wainwright said. “I’m working on a series of experiments with the leaves to come up with a tea that is distinctly ours.” “The biggest influence on any tea is the processing,” she explained. “White, black, green, oolong, and Pu-erh tea all come from the same Camellia Sinensis Sinensis plant. But the leaves are plucked differently and are processed differently to make the different types of teas, and each should be prepared differently for maximum flavor and enjoyment.” (See side bar.)

Did You Know? The poker term “royal flush” has its origins in tea making. “The first flush of the tea plants was always reserved for the royals,” said David Barron of The Fleur de Lis Tea Company. “It was illegal to pluck the field before the kings, queens, and nobles had those first leaves harvested for their private tea reserves. The practice became known as ‘the royal flush’.”

During Wainwright’s visit, she and Barron concentrated on creating a black tea they’re calling “Big Easy; a Tea for the Soul”, a white tea they’re calling “Starry Night; a Tea for the Spirit”, and a green tea they’re calling “Morning Mist; a Tea for the Heart”. As the tea plants at the Amite farm experience their first flush, the young leaf bud is gently twisted off along with the two leaves immediately beneath it. The rest of the plant is left untouched. These select, young leaves are brought into the micro-processing plant where they’re gently withered, dried, rolled, and oxidated. Wainwright continually monitors the sight and smell of the leaves to determine when to halt the process.

“White tea is the least processed,” she said. “It’s gently withered, gently dried, and it’s very easy to make a bad white tea. But when it’s done correctly, you get a really delicious tea with all the florals you want and very delicate flavors. Although a white tea may be more expensive, you can brew the same leaves over and over. I often use the same tea leaves all day. But you can only do that with a good quality tea.” That quality is the aim for these teas and Barron and Wainwright don’t want to release them until they know they’ve achieved that standard. >>

If you think you don’t like green tea, it may be that you’re brewing it at too high a temperature. Each type of tea has an optimum temperature to bring out its best flavor profile. True tea connoisseurs invest in a temperature-control kettle. But you can do the same thing with a simple thermometer. A quick guide of tea types and optimum brewing temperatures would look something like this: • White and Green teas—170 and 185 degrees • Oolong—180 and 190 • Black and Herbal Teas— 208 and 212 degrees (Optimum temp for coffee is 200 degrees.) “Green tea hates boiling water,” Wainwright said. “If you don’t want to use a thermometer, one trick is to pour cold water onto the leaves before adding the boiling water. It’s not a perfect method but it helps.”

Barron admits the first challenge for him, as an accidental tea farmer, was pretending he liked drinking tea. “I’ve never been a tea drinker,” he said. “That’s why I’m so impressed with what Beverly has accomplished in making a tea even I can enjoy.”

“Tea has this amazing ingredient called L-theanine,” Wainwright said. “While tea and coffee both contain caffeine, only tea has L-theanine which acts as a calming agent. Where coffee stimulates the cardiovascular system, tea stimulates the neurovascular system improving attention and brain function. College students studying for a test should be drinking tea, not coffee.”

Rounding out the Fleur de Lis team is tea lover and jack-of-all-trades, Hans Marchese, who joined the business with extensive knowledge on how to prepare, pour, and drink tea after running his own retail tea business in New Orleans. “I’m loving learning about the production end of things,” he said. “I have a background in biology and chemistry from James Madison University and a lot of experience with annual gardening. But tea plants only have to be planted once every 2,000 years. After that, it’s all about the harvesting and production.”

Marchese’s girlfriend, Lyra Schwartz, joined him at the farm and the two are happily filling roles from caring for the resident dogs to managing the tea growth, social media, product design, event center, tea plant propagation, and just all around serving as esprit de corps for the entire enterprise.

Meanwhile, Barron is developing his 160 acres to make it conducive to agritourism. “We’re currently putting in an educational display garden for visitors,” he said. “About 30 acres is bottomland and the bird population there is amazing. I see birds there I’ve never seen anywhere else. I want to turn that into a bird sanctuary and make it available to local birding groups. We’ve already hosted local gardening groups, offering them a tea tasting in our tasting room and tours of the fields and nature trails. We hope to host small weddings. And the Camellia Society held their annual meeting here. Of course, they really came to meet Beverly.”

“Every time you enjoy a cup of tea, you’re connecting with 5,000 years of tradition and you’re connecting with people around the world who have created the tea,” Wainwright said. “We’re all so busy. But tea gives you an excuse to have a moment, just watching the colors change, watching the leaves unfurl. You can’t control the big things in life, but you can make yourself a little ceremony of enjoying your tea. It’s a simple, timeless pleasure.”

“Tea for me is a wee bit of magic,” Wainwright said. “Sadly, many people drink tea in black and white when there’s a whole rainbow of tea to slow down and enjoy.” Now that rainbow includes varieties grown and processed right here in South Louisiana.