I asked Richard how he thought about all this.

He created this network that was sort of self-perpetuating to a degree, and I think ultimately not enough people knew what was involved in tea to be able to point the finger directly.

And yes, he told a lot of strange stories, which in retrospect, and when you add them all up together, seem pretty preposterous.

But he was always quite good at leaving a little kernel of truth somewhere in the middle of the stories he told, something that you couldn't quite say, "Well, that's wrong." You think, "Well, I know that little bit is right, so maybe I'm just missing something here.

Maybe he's, he is an absolute genius." Um, and nobody kind of wants to be the person who sort of pricks the balloon.

Has this put you off drinking tea at all, Richard? Are you still a [laughs] are you still a fan of tea, or do you drink coffee now instead? [laughs]

[laughs] I will continue to be a fan of tea.

I realize I'm not gonna make my millions out of a tea plantation, but there's plenty other ways to be involved in tea.

As you might imagine, it's a pretty small world, and so everyone knows or knows of everyone else.

I had a look at the list, which was sitting on a lectern at the entrance to the tearoom, beautifully bound over multiple pages, all divided into different sections of the different styles of tea, and each of the teas with this nice, sort of attractive, quite flowery name, and a little description of 100 words or so about, uh, the geographical location and some of the specifics of the area where it had been grown.

And, you know, some of the wording, it clearly was very specific to some of the people I knew.

You know, I knew where all the Scottish tea plantations were, but I also knew that those tea plantations hadn't actually produced any tea yet because their plants were so young.

So I took some pictures of the li- list on my phone, circulated it to the other growers, and understandably, the, the owners of those plantations got quite kind of irate about this.

The growers had believed that they were buying plants with a better chance of survival in Scotland than your average tea plants, that at least one generation had been grown in Scottish soil, and especially selected by Tam to be more viable.

We were quite shocked.

Um, but on the other hand, we were almost relieved because it started to allow us to unravel some of the stories behind the plants that we got.

So he arranged to meet Tam.

And this would've been in the very end of 2014, sat in one of the steadings in his farm, uh, with a roaring fire going, and him looking, to all intents and purposes, like this sort of country gent sitting there with his tweed jacket on, and telling me all the economics about the possibility of growing tea in Scotland, and the sort of returns we could expect to get.

He came across as quite a kind of jovial character who was interested in other people, and quite affable, very easy chat.

Yeah, he seemed like somebody I could do business with, and it just seemed a very exciting prospect to be part of this potentially new industry in Scotland.

And so I agreed fairly quickly to buy 500 tea plants from him.

Tam explained that before he could stop them, Richard's entire crop had been picked, and that's when he produced a big plastic tub.

In it were three kilograms of processed green tea.

So we're talking about three kilos of dry leaf, so you need quite a substantial amount more of that picked from the plants.

Yeah, there you go.

It's just been the fun, really fun thing for me besides working with you guys is all the people I've got to meet in the studio.

I've met my hero winemakers right here in the studio.

That's so cool.

They show up with their wine, which is a bonus.

Right.

is your favorite? Can you think of a favorite? Oh, my

gosh.