After a brief period as a tea taster with Brooke Bond, he turned his hand to farming before joining the Fleet Air Arm in 1939.

Built in 2000 at a cost of about $139,000 on a steep site overlooking a vineyard, it was designed by Georg Marterer and Thomas Moosmann for a professional tea taster.

"We wanted to create a sense of the patient sensibility of the professional tea taster," Mr. Marterer said.

As far back as the Nixon Administration, either the White House or the Congress has been trying to eliminate the nation's official tea tasters.

Although the farm is owned by Mr. Fleming, Mr. Hall, the tea taster, is a partner in the business, which has eight other workers.

He then took various jobs including that of a clerk to an estate agent, a shop assistant in a department store and even as a tea taster for a firm of tea merchants.

Mr. Mishra, a tea exporter and certified tea taster in India, introduced Miss O'Brien to a world of fine brews far beyond her more mundane favorites.

Through Chaiwalla (the name, Miss O'Brien said, is Sanskrit for tea taster or tea maker), the entrepreneurs were determined to win converts, one cup at a time.

He also worked as a tea taster, before joining Ogilvy in 1982 as trainee Account Executive.

For example, Mr. Nixon believed that the Republic could survive without a bureau of tea tasters.