Gary Shinner

He and his fiancée, Jill Portman, were in a jewelry store in Chicago buying an engagement ring when they were invited to participate in a Chinese tea ceremony. The tea ritual and multisensory elements of tea stayed with Shinner and Portman. At the time of his tea epiphany, Shinner was working as an investment banker at Sakura Bank. His background in finance and banking served him well when he exited the corporate banking world to start a teahouse in San Francisco with Portman. The two traveled to Asia and Europe and became master tea blenders. When they returned to the U.S. in 1995, they moved from Chicago and resettled in San Francisco. Their teahouse, Tea and Co., located in the hip neighborhood of Pacific Heights, drew people from across the city as well as from around the country. Shinner and Portman understood tea’s impact on the culture and foresaw that it would grow beyond teahouses and plain black tea. They decided that it was time to reach a larger audience. They shut down the teahouse and started Mighty Leaf Tea. From their teahouse days, Shinner and Portman’s passion for whole leaf tea and crafting innovative blends made them stand out from the pack. They pioneered silken mesh bags filled with precise portions of whole leaf teas, which made it easy to enjoy the quality of whole leaf tea in a more mobile, less messy format. From this early incarnation of the mesh bag, they moved on to craft the silken mesh Tea Pouch, which consisted of even fuller tea leaves and chunks of fruit, with more room for the leaves to unfurl and unleash the tea’s full flavor notes. What started as a teahouse has grown into a multimillion-dollar company. Mighty Leaf Tea can be enjoyed at upscale hotels, resorts, restaurants cafés, and coffee bars across the U.S., as well as purchased in fine grocery stores nationwide.