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Angie McCartney. Photo Courtesy of DawnBoweryPhotography.comPaul McCartney’s stepmother is celebrating not just her 87th birthday but also the fifth anniversary of her tea business.
Proving it’s never too late to launch a new venture, Angie McCartney is raising a teacup to Mrs McCartney’s Teas – and telling ENTITY the brand was inspired by memories of making tea for The Beatles in her old Liverpool kitchen.
“Paul always loved his cuppa, as did his dad Jim, and English Breakfast tea was the order of the day in our house,” says Angie, who recalls she once had to remind John Lennon of the correct way to ask for a refill.
“John was staying with us and I’d made the mandatory pot of tea for him, Paul and Jim, then I went back into the living room where John just waggled his cup and saucer at me, without looking up.”
“I was infuriated and said. Excuse me, we have a little word in this house, it is PLEASE.” He turned to me and said, “Sorry Ange, can I have another cup please?” I replied, “That’s better. Manners are very important in this house.”
“Paul and Jim both cringed, that I would dare to challenge the great John Lennon. I heard later from John’s then wife Cynthia that he said he really respected me for standing up to him. He had by then become so accustomed to getting away with whatever he wanted to do or say but that wasn’t going to work for me.”
Now widowed after Jim McCartney passed on “to the great tea dance in the sky” as she calls it, Angie lives in Los Angeles with her daughter – Paul’s half-sister Ruth – and Ruth’s husband Martin, and runs the tea business out of the family home.
She sells Beatles themed organic teas with names like Penny Lane Peppermint, Abbey Road Apple and Strawberry Green Fields Forever.
“The strategy of using the name McCartney to brand the products was a no brainer for me,” explains Angie. “It is my name and is a celebrated name synonymous with all things good and all things British.”
She adds, “Many of the teas contain health giving properties, such as polyphenols (compounds that have antioxidant properties), and singer friends tell me that one of them, Rock Star Red, is beneficial to their overworked vocal chords by helping soothe the throat.”
Most of the sales are online, to customers as far apart as Australia, Brazil and the UK, but the tea is also stocked in stores in Texas and Arizona and included in goodie bags at various charity and corporate events. Among her customers is John Paul DeJoria, co-founder of the Paul Mitchell hair care line and the Patron Spirits Company, who has distributed her teas in goodie bags at his corporate events.
“I prefer to remain silent about who my famous customers are as I would hate them to think I was trading on their names,” continues Angie, who also maintains a silence on her current relationship with stepson Paul McCartney, perhaps for similar reasons.
She married Paul’s father Jim in 1964 at the height of Beatlemania and moved in with him in Liverpool along with her daughter by a previous marriage, Ruth, whom Jim adopted. They spent 12 happy years together until Jim’s death in 1976.
She has done lots of things since then but feels working in the tea business now has brought her working life full circle. “I left school in Liverpool aged 14 and my first job was in a factory making tea for all and sundry. I later worked in a theater box office and became a secretary.”
She did various other jobs, including accounting, before eventually running McCartney Multimedia, a branding agency she launched 20 years ago with her daughter Ruth, whom she describes as “my biggest achievement, inspiration and tea drinking buddy who always laughs at my lame jokes.”
Whatever she has done in life, it has always been accompanied by a cup of tea. “The secret of making a great one is to first warm your pot or your cup, it really does make a difference.”
Like so many fellow Brits, she maintains the tradition of having afternoon tea. “As followers of ‘Downton Abbey’ no doubt know, it’s best with a serving of finger sandwiches, such as cucumber, eggs and cress, accompanied by small iced cakes.”
Five years ago she turned her knowledge of tea into a business and now has customers all over the world clamoring for her organic teas.
It has gone so well that a few months ago she launched a spin-off business called Mrs McCartney’s Wines, with flavors inspired by her stepson’s songs, such as Blackbird Blackberry.
“That song ‘Blackbird’ was originally written for my mother, Edith, and it warms my heart every time I hear it,” adds Angie.
The grapes come from Sonoma and Napa in California and the wines are blended with fruits by the Clear Creek Winery in Kemah, Texas, where they are also bottled and labelled. They are served in a handful of restaurants around the country but sold mainly online.
Proving that charity, like business, begins at home, Angie donates 10 percent of the profits from all her tea and wine sales to the Linda McCartney Breast Cancer Research Center.
Very active at 87, Angie is a force of nature that operates at a frenetic pace. However, one thing in her busy life remains constant – she still begins each day with a nice cup of tea. Raising a cup, she smiles, “Traditions have to be maintained.”
Read all about Angie’s products at www.mrsmccartneysteas.com and www.mrsmccartneyswines.com.
