Cooper, Barry W.
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Barry W. Cooper
Barry W. Cooper is the CEO and chairman of the Cooper Tea Company. He founded the company in 2003 after having spent over 40 years tasting, sourcing and blending teas. Upon the completion of his four-decade apprenticeship, Barry has earned recognition as an International Tea Master.
Barry holds a number of patents for tea preparation and manufacturing. He has published a series of articles on these subjects in the Tea and Coffee Trade Journal. He is a frequent speaker at industry seminars and is the author of Silver Spoons, Mad Baboons, and Other Tales of Tea.
Barry is deeply interested in all aspects of the tea trade and is the former chairman of the Tea Association of the United States. He has been retained as a consultant to the World Bank, the Sri Lankan government, and the People’s Republic of China regarding tea issues. He is also a tea spokesperson for a number of Fortune 500 Companies and has served on the FDA Board of Tea Appeals and as a U.S. Representative to the UNCTAD/GATT Trade Negotiations.
Barry is the founder of SNA Tea Company, a leading private-label tea company with ownership in modern tea packaging facilities and over 40 tea plantations. He was also an owner, investor, and manger of Celestial Seasonings when the company went through a leveraged buyout in 1988.
A confirmed believer in the health benefits of tea, Barry is a devoted tea drinker. He views the high polyphenol content of tea and its free-radical-quenching effect to be a sensible regime to adopt, and he insists his B.W. Cooper's Iced Brew Tea reflects this goodness.
Filled to the brim with stories of adventure in search of "two leaves and a bud," this book could only come from a man who's actually lived those events. Barry Cooper began his lifelong romance with tea at an early age, being raised amongst the tea fields of Kenya, East Africa. In Silver Spoons, he chronicles his ensuing forty-year quest for the perfect cup of tea. Cooper shares lessons learned while being trained in England's most esteemed tea house. He lays bare truths of the tea industry, including the unreported struggles between tea growers, buyers, blenders, and merchants around the world. Cooper reveals the crazy adventures and hair-raising situations encountered in his determination to discover previously unknown sources of herbs. And finally, he tells the inside story of the gambles he took to develop his signature teas.
For those who love tea—or just enjoy a good adventure story—Silver Spoons, Mad Baboons, and Other Tales of Tea is by turns insightful, engrossing, and often downright hilarious.