UMass Magazine Online

Winter 2005

Departments

Prerequisite

Features

A Fruitful Partnership

A New Kind of Farm a New Breed of Farmer

Dear One Absent This Long While

Prerequisite

A Spot for Tea
Coffee Gallery in Northampton steeps shoppers in trends and traditions

–Linda Cahillane




	Mary Lou Heiss ’72 freely dispenses brewing advice at her shop, Culinary Specialties Coffee Gallery in Northampton. She has also authored a cookbook, 50 Recipes for Green Tea, to be published in 2006. Preorder a copy at www.cooksshophere.com. (photo by Ben Barnhart)

IT IS A PERFECT MORNING for tea and I’ve come to the right place. Mary Lou (Gordon) Heiss ’72 and her husband, Bob, have brewed up a pot of Bamboo Tips. Mary serves the pale, light-tasting tea in little green cups carved from bamboo stalks. We all take a sip. “Oh no,” says Mary. “The bamboo from the cups is overwhelming the tea!” She quickly transfers the hot liquid into little Japanese ceramic teacups.

I confess I hadn’t noticed. But Mary would know such things. She is a tea expert: The Heisses have been in the tea business for 30 years. Bamboo Tips, from Sichuan Province in western China, is just one of the many varieties of green tea that they carry in their shop, Culinary Specialties Coffee Gallery in Northampton.

In their cozy store, rows of glass bottles line shelves and are labeled with names like “After the Snow Sprouting” and “Dragon Whiskers.” In front of the teas a countertop holds a large assortment of unique teapots and a variety of brochures describing the characteristics and origins of the teas, as well as tips on brewing them. The Heisses have traveled to China on several occasions to buy and learn more about tea.
Mary Lou shows me a photograph from a recent trip. The serene image shows lush countryside in China’s Jiangxi Province. The landscape is interrupted by a handful of female figures dressed in colorful clothing. With woven baskets slung over their shoulders, they gently pluck the tiniest buds from the Camellia sinensis—the only plant that produces the leaf used for all four varieties of tea: white, green, oolong and black. Grown solely for its foliage, this crop is still harvested by hand, just the way it has been for hundreds of years.

The Heiss’s tea journey began in the early 1970s. Mary Lou and Bob met while both were working for TV Guide Magazine in San Francisco. Inspired by the burgeoning coffeehouse business in the area, they decided to move to the East Coast to open a place of their own.

“We wanted to open a shop in Amherst, but at the time there was no real estate available,” remembers Mary Lou. So over the bridge they went in search of the perfect spot for their dream business. Well before downtown Northampton became a hotspot, they were charmed by Green Street in the heart of the Smith College campus.

“Green Street was very busy with foot traffic,” recalls Mary Lou. The Heisses opened the original Gallery on what is now a small, out-of-the-way street. Starting out as a coffeehouse serving light fare, it was host to artists and musicians who helped launch Northampton’s renaissance.

Those early customers wouldn’t recognize the Coffee Gallery today at its current location on King Street in the heart of busy Northampton. Having blossomed into a sophisticated specialty store, the Coffee Gallery no longer serves food or hosts musical gatherings. Instead the shop is filled with a delectable assortment of olive oil from the Mediterranean, Italian pasta, European chocolate, fragrant spices and the Heisses’ custom-roasted coffees. There’s also an eclectic selection of French and Italian pottery, teapots, strainers, graters, knives and other food-related wares.

Explains Mary Lou, “If I don’t have a passion for something I won’t sell it. In order to get the best product, as in life, you need to develop a personal relationship with the grower, producer or manufacturer of the goods.”

Coffee Gallery customers have come to trust the Heiss’s expertise. One such patron is Ranjanaa Devi, director of the Asian Arts and Culture Program at UMass Amherst. “I have known Bob and Mary Lou through my tea-and-cookies expeditions and buying unique teapots for many years,” says Devi. She invited the Heisses to give a talk and slide show, “Teas from Around the World,” last fall as part of a yearlong celebration of Asian art (see “Experience Asian Art,” this page).

The Heiss’s business philosophy is simple: form a long-lasting partnership with vendors, offer personalized service, and support small producers and family farms around the world.

“Today, the concept of continuing business has all but disappeared, and is considered old-fashioned,” says Mary Lou. “We prefer to have a relationship with our vendors. When new vendors pitch their products to us, I tell them they should hope to someday have a customer like us.”
http://www.cooksshophere.com/

To experience more Asian Arts check out www.fineartscenter.com/asian

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