By Layla Schlack

Steven Smith Teamaker makes some of the best in the business, concocting full-leaf blends from the finest plants in the world. This is thanks to its eponymous founder and tea-blender, aka "tea shaman" Steven Smith who also helped found Stash and Tazo, but also due to the behind-the-scenes work of Tony Tellin, who has the enviable job of traveling the world to taste teas and making sure the bags get made on time.

Occupation: Teamaker at Steven SmithTeamaker
Location: Portland, OR
Age: 33
First job: I worked in a warehouse doing shipping and receiving.
Greatest Professional Challenge: Keeping up with a very creative and entrepreneurial owner, mentor and boss, Steve. We come up with all these blends, and then it’s up to me to make sure we can actually produce them.
Salary During Your 20s: I’m guessing high $20,000s, low $30,000s.

So, Tony, how did you get that F*$%ing awesome job?
You could say it’s a matter of pure luck. I grew up in Iowa and moved here in 1999. I was staying with some friends in Southeast Portland, and the day after I got here, I was riding my bike downtown to go to a temp agency. It was a beautiful, sunny day, and before I got to the river, to cross over into downtown, I smelled this really unusual smell I had never smelled before. It was Steve’s warehouse. Back then it was Tazo, and all the guys were just sitting outside eating sandwiches. I stopped to ask what the smell was. It turned out the warehouse manager had just gotten approval to hire someone. He liked Midwesterners, thought they were hard workers. So it was literally, I think, the next day that he offered me a job. I never even made it into downtown. I’ve been with Steve ever since and just kind of done every job there is here.

One of the things that’s funny about it, at least to people on the coasts, is that even though Portland’s a very friendly city, people won’t necessarily just come up to you and start talking. But that’s kind of how it happened. I’m sure it helped that it was a sunny day. In Portland, when the sun comes out, the whole world is just in a good mood.

Are you on the road a lot?
I spent a lot of time with the growers in Sri Lanka, India, China, Africa. I did three weeks of training in Sri Lanka. But now that we have those relationships in place, I don’t spend as much time on those kinds of trips. I was last in India about a year ago. But I am going to the U.K. to talk about distribution. I really loved Sri Lanka and India.

What’s a typical day like in Portland?
Making sure that the manufacturing department is making blends taste the way they should and that they have the supplies they need. Right now, let’s see, I got some first-flush darjeelings in, so I’m tasting those to figure out which one we should import. I’m preparing a presentation for my trip to the U.K. We don’t really have job titles here, so I’m kind of just always doing a bit of everything. It keeps me on my toes.

What is the process of creating a new blend?
I like to play around a lot, but Steve’s really the guy who creates the blends. My role is more producing them, making sure we can re-create the tastes of his blends. But I have some input. He’s really into the black teas and the green teas, kind of the China and India. I’m more into the stuff from Africa, the herbals. It’s a good balance.

Have you always been a tea drinker?
Like most Iowans, I grew up drinking sun tea in the summer. We’d mix up big jugs of it with tons of sugar. Once I started working at Tazo, I was amazed at the complexity of it.

What do you wish more people knew about tea?
It doesn’t end with your English breakfast, or your jasmine or green tea in a Chinese restaurant. On the coasts and in big cities, people are a little more knowledgeable about the types of teas, but I also like to bring a certain ceremony. I like the ritual of the Pu-erh in China and the Japanese tea ceremony.

Keep an eye on smithtea.com for Steve Smith’s ReadyMade blend!

[Images via Smith Teamaker on Facebook]

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