DAVID HOFFMAN

David Lee Hoffman talks about the potential of vermiculture and the promise of the earth worm

David Lee Hoffman has been traveling the remote backcountry of Asia for more
than forty years, seeking out the world’s finest rare, organic, and wild pure leaf teas. He established Silk Road Teas in 1992, in order to share these teas with the Western world where many of them were seen for the first time.

Hoffman is the first American to work directly with tea farmers in China and to engage in joint ventures with old, established gardens. He travels frequently to China to buy tea for export, but more importantly, to work with the prestigious Tea Research Institute, the Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences, and the Department of Agriculture to help them implement sustainable and organic tea farming practices.

Hoffman has an extensive background in vermiculture and soil fertility,knowledge he has gained while living on and working his own land the past thirty years in Marin County, California. His concern about the future of our planet and the destruction caused by chemical fertilizers and modern farming practices have been a driving force in his support of sustainable agriculture. He developed a potent organic fertilizer, Vermisol 10-5-5, that the tea farmers in China recognize as the finest fertilizer available.

Hoffman is the subject of a new feature documentary film by Les Blank and Gina
Leibrecht, “All In This Tea” that is screening in film festivals around the world. The film follows Hoffman to some of the most remote regions of China in search of the finest teas in the world.

In 2005, Hoffman sold Silk Road Teas and is now working as a tea consultant and lecturer. He is currently finishing a book on his tea adventures with the working title, “Tea: The Journey Behind the Cup”. He is also caring for his 200,000 pounds of rare pu-erh teas known as “The Phoenix Collection,” possibly the largest collection of such tea in the world with over 300 varieties of pu-erh stored in specially constructed caves for their proper aging.