The Agony of the Leaves: the Ecstasy of My Life With Tea

New York: H. Holt, 1996. First edition, first printing (full number line). Octavo in orange and yellow boards in orange, clipped jacket; color illus.; 174 pp., 22 cm.; inscribed by author on half-title page; boards and jacket show light signs of wear along the edges and corners; no major tears or flaws; pages are clean, crisp, bright and free of marks and creases; edges of leaves are clean; binding is tight and square; a gently used copy. in very good + dust-jacket. Hardcover. ISBN: 0805038450

In English. Contents: Teatime in the sun room -- The faculty follies tea party -- Irish honeymoon -- The big backyard tea-in and other tea parties -- The Waters Upton Tea Room -- My early days at Chez Panisse: converting the heathen -- Latter days at Chez Panisse: preaching to the choir -- Gentlemen farmers on the prairie, or the summer of the peach dumplings -- Tea with Mr. T. -- All the tea in China; 'The "agony of the leaves" is the century-old phrase used in the tea trade to describe the transformative moment in preparing tea: when the oxygen of the boiling water allows the tea leaf to release its flavor. The leaves "may appear tormented and miserable, like autumn leaves in a storm, but they may also look dancing and fanciful", writes Helen Gustafson. She has been living in this moment for as long as she can remember. Widely famed as the tea guru of Berkeley's Chez Panisse, Gustafson is sought after as a lecturer, writer, and irrepressible tea personality. In The Agony of the Leaves, she creates intersections between her own life and her experiences with tea - from domestic tea rituals in her Saint Paul, Minnesota, upbringing to her Irish honeymoon where she encountered Barry's of Cork tea to her first meeting with the venerable Mr. Twining, of the Twining tea empire, in search of the incomparable Two Hundred Seventy-fifth Anniversary black Yunnan tea. Gustafson's approach to the minutiae of the tea experience is a magically macroscopic one - she makes the subject of tea as ecstatic ritual come alive through biographical detail, storytelling, recipes, and reminiscences. This charming little book reveals a true gourmet's sensibility, rendered brilliantly in her particularly warm, insightful prose.' -jacket SUBJECT(S)Descriptor: Tea. Cooking.