Bruce Ginsberg

 

 

 

 

 

The man behind the tea

Bruce Ginsberg is a true tea man from a tea family - you could say he has tea in his veins. He is passionate about rare and wonderful handmade artisan teas, which can still be found in parts of China and elsewhere.

He believes strongly in the Slow Food movement and the preservation of the heritage of crafts and skills relating to food. He has spent a lifetime in a close and respectful relationship with nature and believes that the things that we eat need to be perceived as having natural dynamic vitality, not as some lifeless chemical product used as “fuel”. He is certain that there is a crucial relationship between agricultural communities and the protection of the environment - a relationship that must be nurtured to survive.

He introduced Rooibos tea to the UK more than 25 years ago. He has been a Rooibos tea farmer and a maker of fine high quality Rooibos in South Africa. He was also a wine and fruit farmer and a mycologist. He has been a journalist and is a passionate environmentalist. He is also a talented and knowledgeable garden designer and garden historian. He has a specialist interest in Chinese and Japanese culture, tea culture, painting and poetry.

He spent two years in Asia studying Asian culture including some time training at the famous 13th century Daitokuji Zen monastery in Japan, where the tea ceremony was born some 500 years ago and where some of Japan’s most celebrated ancient gardens are situated. He remains fascinated by the relationship between tea drinking and gardens in eastern Asia.

He continues to travel in the area and visits China each spring, exploring and tasting rare teas in the remote mountainous regions, which are home to the most elusive tea gardens.

Besides his tea interests, he also runs a commercial nursery specialising in Box and topiary. He is chairman of the European Box and Topiary Society, a specialist horticultural body that studies old period gardens, documents topiary skills and seeks to improve the taxonomy and encourage research into Box and Yew.

As founder of Wistbray Ltd, the company behind Dragonfly Teas, he is committed to the Organic movement and to trading fairly with a small number of smaller growers. Through his tutelage the company takes its responsibilities to all its stakeholders seriously. It believes that by operating within an ethos of “right practise” that that ethos can be spread throughout its chains of activity.

As he says “Not everyone is aware that there can be high pesticide usage in the growing of tea and that some tea-producing countries allow excessive and unjustified use of chemicals. We have shown that it is possible to produce high quality teas which are grown without the use of chemicals and which reflect everything that is good about the tea culture”

The result is -