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| November 23, 2001 Tea time at Celestial Seasongs Even if sippin's not your bag, free tour's a real eye-opener By Miles Blumhardt MilesBlumhardt@coloradoan.com Bet 19-year-old Mo Siegel never hallucinated that his hippie herb-picking days in the mountains around Aspen and Boulder would amount to this. But then, Mo obviously wasn't your average hippie hoping to find some wild weed in the ditch. In 32 off-and-on years,
Touring the Celestial Seasonings building just north of Boulder has never been on my must-do list when entertaining out-of-state guests. But while browsing the book "Colorado's Best" by Bruce Caughey and Doug Whitehead for Trippin' ideas, I read where they dubbed it "best free tour." I'd argue that the New Belgium Brewing Company tour in Fort Collins rivals Celestial's, but I never imagined packaging tea bags could be so interesting. And that's coming from a guy whose consumption of Celestial Seasoning's teas could fit in the bottle caps of a six-pack of Fat Tire. The tours are quite popular, as evidence by the 30 people on the tour I took on a Thursday (Nov. 8) and by from where they came - Ohio, Indiana, California, New York and even Amsterdam. More than 80,000 people on average annually tour the herb home. The tour starts
You don't get much time to view the art at the beginning of the tour. But don't worry, you can view it while sipping all the free post-tour tea your bladder will allow. Mo must be quite a thinker. Everywhere you turn, from signs on the lawn to the walls of the art gallery to overhead of the assembly lines, there are philosophical one-liners from smarties I'd heard of like Keats, Shakespeare and Hugo, to many who, if I were addressing them at some big important party, I'd have to just say "hey, big guy." Did you know that "a thing of beauty is a joy forever?" John Keats. Or that "on the path that leads to nowhere, I have sometimes found my soul." Corrine Roosevelt Robinson. How about "the more I think, the simpler I become." I just made it up, but it sounds good. I wish Mo would put that up on the wall somewhere. Once your nose pokes through the factory doors, it's pleasantly confused by a myriad of powerful scents, each jumping over one another to dominate your olfactory senses. Not only is the tour free, you also get a free aromatherapy session. This day, hibiscus from Thailand was winning the breathing battle because it was the main herb being milled. Hibiscus is the main ingredient in Celestial's popular Zinger teas. While my head was spinning from the scents and towers of crated spices and herbs, our tour guide, Deneige Nash, flawlessly explained and showed us all about the processes involved in making many of Celestial's products. You know what I liked? Despite her having to recite the same tea trivia day after day after day, Deneige made you believe she was excited to do so. It also helped that she has a microphone so that you can hear over the loud machinery. The robotic palletizer is kind of cool, except it replaced you. It does the work of 15 humans and requires no smoke breaks. But there is no question that the peppermint room steals the tour. Nash warned us that once she opened the large garage door that our eyes would water and our sinuses would clear.
While we watched some of the 8 million bags of tea that are boxed daily roll by us on the assembly line maze, Nash told us that the environment-conscious company saves 300,000 pounds of paper a year because it doesn't use string to tie its individual tea bags. Exceptions are bags sent to the Orient, where it is considered unsanitary not to have a string, and to restaurants. Because Deneige was an energetic and delightful tour guide, I didn't raise my hand and ask that if Celestial was so conscious about the environment why the company was gassing the neighborhood prairie dogs. She also told us the top three selling brands of Celestial teas are, in order, Sleepytime, whose label boasts the company's trademark of a sleepy bear with nightcap, chamomile and peppermint. I poked around the post-tour Tea Shop, where you can actually pick up some significant bargains, then stopped back at the tour center and sampled all three bestsellers plus a few others. I liked them all, but Sleepytime was my favorite. I sipped tea and browsed the art gallery before heading home. Despite my intent to rush home so I wouldn't be late for the 5:30 p.m. kickoff of the Air Force-Colorado State University football game, I noticed I drove - well, pretty darn close to - the speed limit. I didn't cut anybody off and never received nor gave the bird to any other driver on my return trip. I guess Benedict Spinoza was right: "All excellent things are as difficult as they are rare." Must have been the tea. |
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