Frank Murphy is no tea snob. It's just that his credentials make him seem like one: author of a new book on the "transcendent nature" of tea, a senior student of a Taoist priest tea master and the recipient of the kind of full-body reaction to tea that more commonly describes a '60s drug trip.
But in his modest kitchen near Santa Fe High School, Murphy puts an ordinary saucepan of water on the stove to boil for tea, chats with his teenage daughter about whether it's OK for her to cut up a bed sheet for a dress and sets some jam jars on the counter for the tea.
And then he ruins his "ordinary guy" cover— he has 200 window-washing clients— by saying to a caffeine-sensitive visitor, "Would you prefer the second infusion?"
That's tea talk: If he pours off the tea from the first steeping, then adds more water to the tea leaves, the second batch will have about 80 percent less caffeine.
Murphy, 58, won't go near any talk of calling himself a tea master, but nods toward the phrase tea connoisseur. "You're either born with the taste buds or not," he said.
"We're really educators and missionaries spreading the word about tea."
With an eclectic background that includes writing poetry, studying to become a priest and assisting in delivering babies in Morocco as a medical corpsman in the U.S. Navy, Murphy somehow combines it all in his new book, "The Spirit of Tea," by Sherman Asher Publishing.
The result is a lyrical, spiritual treatise leading readers to a new appreciation of tea.
Awakening
For the past 14 years, Murphy has lectured throughout the country on tea and done research in China on tea.
It all started after a pivotal moment— an hour, actually— in Murphy's Santa Fe living room when he had a rather unusual reaction to a cup of Pu-erh tea, from the Yunan province in China.
"I took the tea in, followed the warmth into my belly, then my energy followed the path of the tea," he told the Journal a few years ago. "The chi (the circulating life force, in Chinese philosophy), and the tea, dropped down and I woke up in the belly, the pelvic floor. Then it continued to go down and ground into the earth. Then the chi came up into my body and flowered in my chest. It opened up my heart chakra."
Murphy wanted an explanation. So he bought a book called "The Tea Lover's Treasury," by James Norwood Pratt.
"I tracked him down in Santa Francisco," said Murphy. "He had a window-washing company, too, and we talked for an hour and a half."
Pratt invited Murphy to San Francisco, where he introduced him to his teacher, legendary tea master Ray Fong, who owns the Imperial Tea Court there.
Both Pratt and Fong immediately recognized Murphy's unusual experience as similar to their own— an indication his taste buds had the necessary chops— and Murphy's training as a tea connoisseur began.
During those first few years, he went to San Francisco twice a year, spending five days, eight to 12 hours a day, drinking tea with Fong, Pratt and Donald Wallis, former head of the American Tea Master Association.
"We would drink 40 to 60 cups a day, teas from around the world," says Murphy. "We'd start from the highest grade and go to the lowest grade. Was it over-fired, under-fired? We'd look at the consistency of the dry leaf, the temperature of the water, how well it held up under multiple infusions."
Teaching tea
In the past several years, Murphy's role as an educator has expanded. Last year, for example, he was contracted by the Santa Fe Opera for five months of lectures, tastings and tea demonstrations in conjunction with the opera "Tea: A Mirror of Soul."
He was also videotaped for Chinese television while doing a talk at the Santa Fe Children's Museum, which was translated into Mandarin. Murphy is going to China this fall for a two-week intensive in Taiwan at an oolong tea farm.
And while he imagines he'll keep to his mission of spreading the word about tea in straightforward ways, he's also working on a novel about tea, a comedy. "It will be a composite of wacky tea-crazy eccentrics," said Murphy.
"Tea can be a little formal for me, in the Japanese and English traditions," said Murphy. "I'm from a very old, formal New England family and part of the reason I moved out here was to get away from all that."
Still, Murphy said he had many wonderful moments growing up drinking English breakfast tea with milk and sugar in the backyard.
One of his favorite passages in his new book is when he describes having tea with an elderly English woman who used three Stash Earl Grey tea bags to make a pot of tea, and served it with a bowl of Coffee Mate.
For Murphy, it was not an experience to make light of, but one to savor.
"These are the moments of graciousness we all experience when it comes to tea etiquette," wrote Murphy. "Moments of humility when someone makes a genuine effort to reach out to us."
Murphy can reached at jademountaintea@earthlink.net.
Excerpt from "The Spirit of Tea," Sherman Asher Publishing, by Frank Murphy:
"Understand, if tea is going to speak to you, if tea is going to enter your heart and change your life, it will do so no matter how it is packaged, processed, or presented, no matter where it is from, how old it is, or how it is brewed. Whether a rare and priceless tea from a remote and exotic tea garden in China or your basic Brand X, it doesn't matter. Whether in a Yixing pot or a Mason jar, if your intentions are honorable and you approach tea with reverence and respect, there is no wrong way to make it."
If You Go
WHAT: Book launch and tea tasting for "The Spirit of Tea"
WHEN: 3 p.m. May 24
WHERE: Garcia Street Books, 376 Garcia St.
HOW MUCH: Free
