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This spring, a seventh Argo Tea
location opens in the South Loop; by
2008, the company’s founders—Arsen Avakian,
Daniel Lindwasser, and Simon Simonian —aim
to have expanded beyond Chicago. Chicago
interviewed Avakian, who explained that the name
Argo references the Mediterranean heritage of the trio
as well as the mythological hero Jason and his
Argonauts: Like Jason, we want to help American
customers discover a new world of tea.
by Ceil Miller Bouchet
Illustration:
Martin O’Neill
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Q: When you opened the first Argo in
2003, did you know that the loose-leaf tea trend
was on the rise?
A: We knew that
specialty loose-leaf tea was one of the
fastest-growing segments in the beverage industry.
But we were more interested in taking a
Starbucks-like model and applying it to tea.
Q: Argo does seem more similar to
Starbucks than a Victorian teashop.
A:
We serve over 20,000 customers per week. That
means our operational flow has to be set up to
serve quickly and consistently. For example, we
brew tea concentrates up daily in vats at the
Randolph Street store and send them to other
locations, where they are then diluted on a
drink-by-drink basis.
Q: What did you learn by starting your
own business?
A: We were creating a
new market segment. It took more time than we
thought to build a solid team, form a crisp and
sharp brand name, put the technology in place to
ensure consistent quality, nurture good
relationships with suppliers. We decided we
would not take short cuts with any of these things.
So we take it slow and only open a new branch once
the previous one is profitable.
Q: What about social responsibility in
procurement? Most tea comes from really poor
regions of the world.
A: We’ve taken
the time to develop individual relationships with
our suppliers, who are mostly specialty
plantations in Asia. And we have an intimate
knowledge and control of where the tea’s coming
from and how it iss transported. Unfortunately, the
social and economic conditions of many Asian
countries aren’t conducive to fair trade
practices. But there is a movement, even among
large tea companies like Lipton, toward more of a
fair trade mentality. We support fair trade. But
it is difficult to implement, being a smaller
company.
Q: I recently tried one of your
signature drinks: the hibiscus steamer. It tasted
like a Snapple. Do you see any danger in promoting
a sweetened drink as healthy?
A: Our
beverages are 100 percent natural. We use only
unprocessed natural sugar cane juice as a
sweetener. It is not the sweetener that is
unhealthy, sugar is fine if consumed in moderate
quantities.
Q: But hibiscus isn’t really tea.
A: Hibiscus tea is what we call
herbal tea, which means that it doesn’t come from
the tea bush called Camellia sinensis. But
hibiscus is high in vitamin C and, as an herbal
drink, blends well with apple cider. The hibiscus
steamer is one of our most popular drinks.
A Wine Snob’s Guide to
Fine Tea
Tea expert
Shashank Goel believes artisanal
tea has a lot in common with fine wine. He should
know; the India-born Goel owns a 12,000-acre tea
estate in the Himalayas. Two years ago, with his
wife, Sumita, he launched his own fine tea brand,
Ineeka, out of a warehouse in Chicago’s Kinzie
industrial corridor. Chicago asked Goel, who
commands up to $2,000 per kilo for his specialty
Darjeeling at Mariage Frères in Paris (a more
affordable Ineeka variety sells at Whole Foods and
Wild Oats for $10 a tin), for five ways wine
lovers can approach tea.
Photograph:
Megan Lovejoy
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STEER CLEAR OF ADDED FLAVOR
“Let’s say you have a wine bottle and you have not
uncorked it. Can you smell the wine? No. Any tea
that smells in the dry form is a horrible tea. As
soon as fine tea is brewed, you get this beautiful
aroma from the infusion in the leaves. If it
smells in the dry form, the smell comes from added
flavor. They are taking a low-quality product and
masking it with flavor.”
GEOGRAPHY MATTERS “Wine comes
from a few different types of grape. It is where
the wine grows—for an example, in Champagne: that
region gives it a certain characteristic. The
Darjeeling region is to tea what Champagne is to
wine. The Assam region is like Bordeaux.”
AIR IT OUT “Good tea should be
steeped four or five minutes; if it is whole leaf
tea, even if you steep it longer, it will get
stronger and not bitter. [As for reusing the bag]
I’m a purist. Would you dilute wine with water?
No.”
TEA TASTING IS LIKE A
WINETASTING “You look at the dry leaf,
you smell the infusion, you taste. You even look
at color. Good tea is supposed to have a nice
bright color; even black tea should have a golden
dark hue and look alive to you.”
TEA AND WINE SHARE THE SAME
VOCABULARY “Green tea should be a mellow
dry flowery finish. Intense for black teas. White
teas generally are extremely, extremely light. It
has got a very subtle perfumy taste, a light taste
that lingers on. Just like a wine, if you have a
great tea, it lingers on.”
–Cassie
Walker | 
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