Portland serial entrepreneur Steven Smith, the Tazo Tea co-founder who redefined tea for consumers worldwide, seeding a $1 billion brand and launching other ventures, died Monday from complications from liver cancer. He was 65.

A quietly charismatic and humorous man, Smith took creative and financial risks to help make tea to Portland what coffee is to Seattle. He and his partners built Tazo from scratch in just four years. They sold the company to Starbucks, which took the quirky brand global.

A personal remembrance, by Richard Read

The reporter for The Oregonian/OregonLive got to know Steve Smith during a trip to India, and

as Smith approached death with courage and flair. With video by

.

With Tazo, Stash Tea Co., which he also co-founded, and Steven Smith Teamaker, his latest venture co-founded with his wife, Kim DeMent, Smith steered consumers from humdrum Lipton-style brands to specialty blends. He reinvented tea much as Starbucks revolutionized coffee, Oregon craft brewers transformed beer and Northwest vintners refined wine.

Smith's success inspired dozens of other high-end tea start-ups, elevating consumer standards and expectations. His palate was so refined, having sampled hundreds of thousands of varieties, that Portland entrepreneur Steve Lee considered him to be one of the world's top tea tasters. At one sip, Smith could tell which part of the world a tea came from and often which plantation had produced it.

"He certainly has been a driving force in redefining tea for all of us, both in terms of variety and quality," said Stan Amy, a New Seasons co-founder.

The slim, silver-haired teamaker scoured the world for the best varieties, becoming a legendary figure from Assam, India, to Zheijang, China. He encouraged venerable tea estates to develop organic, sustainable production. He invented blends such as Awake, Om and Zen at Tazo. He took chai to new levels with ingredients such as ginger root, cassia, black pepper, cloves and cardamom.

Smith always had a slight smile and a twinkle in his eye, as if dreaming of his next venture. He infused his teas not just with original ingredients but with whimsy and mythical history. He was aided and abetted by innovative cohorts, several of whom also happened to be named Steve.

The late Steve Sandoz of Wieden+Kennedy crafted Tazo's brand. Sandoz declared with a straight face that Tazo was "the name of the whirling mating dance of the pharaohs of ancient Egypt and a cheery salutation used by Druids and 5th-century residents of Easter Island."

Brand guru Steve Sandstrom got a kick out of the final item on Tazo's ingredients list: "the mumbled chantings of a certified tea shaman." The U.S. Food and Drug Administration had never approved such an ingredient. But Smith charmed an official into it.

Steven Dean Smith drank his first teas with his grandmother, next door to his family's home in Portland's blue-collar Errol Heights district. Attending Franklin High School, he drank chamomile tea in smoky coffeehouses around Portland State University.

He dropped out of PSU after a year and joined the Navy, serving on the USS Hancock, an aircraft carrier sending planes into Vietnam. Discharged in 1971, Smith managed a natural-foods store and herb shop in downtown Portland that ultimately went bust.

Steve Lee bought the store's assets to sell herbs through the mail. Smith, with long curly hair and a 1964 Volkswagen bus, made $15,000 selling Lee's herbs during a one-month West Coast drive. Lee couldn't afford Smith's 10 percent commission. So he made him a partner in Stash and Universal Tea Co.

"He was the best salesperson I've ever seen," Lee said, "and part of the reason was that he didn't know how good he was."

On the side, Smith founded a Northwest Portland coffeehouse in the early 1970s, using good-quality Arabica beans instead of high-caffeine Robusta beans ubiquitous at the time. His approach was similar to Starbucks; he could well have launched a similar coffee empire.

But in his heart, Smith was always a tea man.

Instead Smith and Lee hit on Oregon mint. They bought a wheat combine for $800, reversed the airflow, got a tractor-trailer license and began processing and hauling. They sold hundreds of tons of mint to Lipton and Celestial Seasonings.

On the proceeds, Smith and Lee built Stash, after missteps and struggles, into one of the nation's largest specialty tea companies, with $10 million annual revenues. In 1993, they sold Stash for an undisclosed amount to Yamamotoyama, a three-century-old Japanese tea company.

Not long after selling Stash, four Steves sat in a circle in Sandstrom's office, brainstorming the next venture. Finally, they had enough capital -- about $500,000, Lee said, compared to $5,000 for Stash -- to build a solid company. That meant they could afford to lose money for the first few years.

"Steve was the most creatively resourceful guy I've ever known," Lee said. "He developed skills in all facets of marketing, sales, production, finance, corporate structure. For start-ups, he was very talented."

Smith and some potential investors "had this notion in their minds, it was Merlin meets Marco Polo," Sandstrom said. From that vague concept came Tazo, a brand featuring concoctions from Smith's kitchen, packaged with imaginary mythologies and New Age humor. They began developing it for Starbucks, but the coffee company picked a Colorado partner instead.

"Tazo was highly unusual, highly risky," Sandstrom said. "I had no idea it would succeed. I kind of thought we'd get devil-worship hate mail."

Instead, blends sold for an unprecedented $4.49 a box, compared to $2.50 for specialty teas sold by Twinings, Bigelow and Lipton. Tazo became a lightning-rod brand, still cited in textbooks read by marketing students nationwide. It caught a New Age wave as baby boomers grew more health conscious, took up yoga, tried acupuncture and sought authentic products.

Smith had an uncanny ability to spot talent. Tony Tellin, a 21-year-old newcomer to Portland, cycled by Tazo's loading dock one day. He stopped and asked workers whether the company was hiring.

Tellin got a warehouse job and began hefting boxes. By some fluke, Tellin turned out to have a highly refined palate for tea. Under Smith's tutelage, he became Tazo's chief taster.

Together, Smith and Tellin took buying trips to India, Sri Lanka and beyond. Riding bulbous Ambassador taxis through Calcutta's crazed traffic, they arrived at brokerages where men in white smocks and brooding mustaches had spent hours assembling tea samples on long tables.

Smith and Tellin moved systematically down the line during each cupping session. They loudly aspirated each tea for a second or two before ejecting it into a spittoon on wheels. They'd grunt, nod and comment. Smith's cupping record was 800 teas in a day.

When they liked a tea, they pushed the sample forward on the table.

The brokerage sent the favored batches by air courier to Portland, where Tazo brewed it in local water. If a tea made the cut, Tazo ordered by the ton.

From Calcutta, Smith and Tellin caught a flight north and drove to Darjeeling, a high, misty town steeped in British colonial history. They stayed on the Makaibari Tea Estates, one of the many lush tea plantations that cling to jungly hills beneath jagged Himalayan peaks.

Here, Smith was treated as a celebrity and served, as each guest was, "bed tea," by a house hand who knocked on the bedroom door at an appointed hour, carrying a tray with freshly brewed Makaibari tea. Smith and DeMent, his second wife, were married in 1996 on this most hallowed ground of tea by a Hindu priest and a Buddhist Rinpoche.

Smith gave back. He teamed with Mercy Corps to improve conditions in India's tea-growing areas. Tazo gave the Portland-based humanitarian agency money to build roads, water systems and community halls, to install latrines and to train village health workers. The venture was an early model of growing collaboration between businesses and relief-and-development organizations.

Smith enjoyed thinking up companies and starting them far more than managing them. In 1998, Tazo caught Starbucks piloting a brand of tea called Tiazzi, which Smith perceived as an infringement on his brand. A polite "cease and desist" letter from Tazo led to a meeting in which Starbucks offered to buy the Portland company.

The sale closed for a reported $9.1 million. Howard Schultz, Starbucks chairman and chief executive officer, warned Smith that Tazo would inevitably change once the big corporation took it over.

But the titans of coffee and tea remained cordial.

"I have the deepest respect and admiration of Steve for his entrepreneurial spirit, dedication to his family and his passion for excellence," Schultz said. "I know that I speak for many when I say that Steve was an inspiration and truly one of a kind.

Smith stayed on at Tazo's creative helm, learning about Starbucks from the inside. He left in 2006. Purists cringed at changes the coffee corporation made, starting with eliminating Tazo's "mumbled chantings" catch phrase for "legal reasons."

"To me, it was kind of like, well, that's a slippery slope," Sandstrom said. "At what point do you lose your edge, your appeal, your surprise and all the little things that are the points of difference -- joyful for some, maybe insulting for some -- but without distinction, you don't have a brand, you just have a product."

Smith never looked back, even when Starbucks moved Tazo to Seattle in 2012.

Honoring a non-compete requirement, he moved for a year of rest and renewal to France with Kim and their 9-year-old son, Jack.

No sooner had they returned to Portland than the couple launched a new business. Steven Smith Teamaker, a small-batch, loose and ready-to-drink tea company, is based in a former Northwest Portland blacksmith's shop. Jittery Starbucks execs invited to the new company's opening perused the operation, their wariness of Smith as a potential competitor showing he remained an industry force.

Smith had fought his creative team for six months, not wanting the new company to bear his name. Once he succumbed, designers presented sketches of packaging labeled "Steven Smith Teamaster."

"He looked at it and said, 'Naw, Teamaker,'" Sandstrom said. "That was perfect. Teamaster is what we always referred to him as. But Teamaker, that's more humble, that's better."

Once again, Smith and DeMent enlisted loyal team members, such as Tellin from Tazo. Once again, Smith took big risks. Whoever heard of launching a small-batch, high-end tea company -- with some blends selling at $11 a box -- in the jaws of the Great Recession?

And yet once again, Smith worked his magic. Lee said his friend toiled long hours, tinkered with products and unlike most entrepreneurs, never entertained failure.

"I can't say he never entertained doubt," said Lee, founder and chief executive of Kombucha Wonder Drink. "I don't know that for certain, but I never thought so."

"I spend time with my doubts," Lee said. "I know that happens with other entrepreneurs. But Steve never showed signs of doubt. He was confident he could do anything he put his mind to."

True to form, Smith Teamaker took off. Its elegant string-tied boxes popped up on shelves of gourmet stores nationwide. Each box bore a number to be entered on the company's web site, which detailed exactly when and where the batch was harvested, blended and packed. And each box bore a slogan: "the most uncommon name in tea. Since 1949" -- the year of Smith's birth.

With three dozen employees, Smith Teamaker is expanding, soon to open a 25,000-square-foot tea warehouse, production, blending, lab, tasting room and retail cafe in inner Southeast Portland. On his sick bed in recent weeks, Smith reviewed plans, made design decisions with DeMent and devised marketing strategies.

"One of the last things he said to me was, that was still what kept him going, was the creative process," said Stephen Kimberley, a Eugene doctor who helped Smith create medicinal teas. "He went out doing what he loved to do, and that was create."

Refusing to succumb to advancing liver cancer last year, Smith took a business trip to South Korea, braving swollen ankles without mentioning his ill health. He opted out of the usual late-night drinking rituals, telling hosts that he had nightly 9:30 p.m. conference calls.

Amy, the New Seasons co-founder, has no doubt that Smith Teamaker will grow to succeed its namesake, given the team that Smith assembled to be led by DeMent.

"She's been involved in all the critical brand decisions and knows the team well," Amy said. "Smith Teamaker is perhaps the purest expression of Steve taking things to a new level in terms of the quality of tea in this country."

On a recent evening in his Lake Oswego home, Smith reclined in a hospital bed front and center amid partying friends. His tall, curly-haired son, Jack, reclined next to him. His daughter, Carrie, stood nearby, her expression both happy and sorrowful. Kim, strong in the face of her impending loss, brought Smith pizza and tea.

Smith appeared haggard, his trademark smile faded. Oxygen tubes protruded from his nose.

One by one, friends and family members sat on the bed next to him. Smith recognized each person. He called them by name. He looked them in the eyes and spoke softly, recalling shared experiences from years ago.

His attention faded in and out as medication ebbed and flowed. But each time, he picked up the conversation where he'd left off.

A couple pulled out guitars. Everyone crowded into the room.

They sang old folks songs. "Danny Boy." "Somewhere Over the Rainbow."

"You are my sunshine, my only sunshine, you make me happy when skies are gray. You'll never know dear, how much I love you, please don't take my sunshine away."

It was vintage Smith. No dying alone for him. To Amy, it rang true.

"Maybe, even as he's dying," Amy said, "Steve's giving us an example of how to reshape the experience of death."

Smith passed away shortly after 4 p.m. Monday. Services will be held at 3:30 p.m. March 31 in the Sentinel hotel, 614 S.W. 11th Ave., Portland.

Survivors are his wife, Kim DeMent Smith; his daughter, Carrie Smith-Prei, of Edmonton, Canada; his son, Jack; his sisters, Dana Barron, of Bend; Lori Carroll, of Tehachapi, Calif.; Wendy Wersch, of Portland; and two grandchildren, Leopold and Adeline.

The family suggests contributions in Smith's memory be made to Mercy Corps' School Education Retention Program to help students finish high school in Assam, India, and go on to college.

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