Tate spent the next two days in Key West, staying in a floating hotel room in the Gulf of Mexico. Like other business trips gathering the finest teas of the world, he loved the places he went to and the variety of people he met and their different cultures. Although Key West was very American and offered much for the tourist, he liked to weave himself into the oddities of the places he visited: small stores that sold love potions, caves that had once housed cannibals, and rooms within underground churches of mysterious religions. He couldn’t get enough of the nooks and crannies of the places he visited regarding the different teas he had tasted and purchased throughout his career, processes that had taken him all over the world.
His host in Key West was the lemon grower Nelson “Nel” Batin
