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David Lee Hoffman is an American tea importer, as well as the founder and director of The Last Resort, an ecological research center, and The Phoenix Collection, his personal tea archive. [1]
David Lee Hoffman is a self-promoted “tea guru”, and as a vocal importer and public promoter of Chinese teas to the West, particularly pu’er teas. In the early 1970s, he began importing pu’er teas from Nepal, and eventually ventured into remote regions in China to seek out fine, rare, and wild teas. Hoffman is the subject of filmmaker Les Blank and Gina Leibrecht's 2007 documentary “All in This Tea.” In 2004, Hoffman sold the Silk Road Tea company and now runs The Phoenix Collection.
Hoffman lives and works at a complex of home and business buildings he dubbed "The Last Resort" in Lagunitas, California. The Last Resort aims to improve sustainable methods for waste management, water reuse, and food security. Using his research into vermiculture, Hoffman created "the worm palace," a system that converts all household waste to high-grade fertilizer, as part of Hoffman's quest for a "super soil". Hoffman first presented vermiculture to the International Symposium on Earth Worm Ecology in Columbus, Ohio in 1994. Hoffman has also installed a greywater system, a two-vault composting toilet using a simple design formerly approved by the state, and solar systems at The Last Resort.
Several Tibetan monks contributed to the construction and creation of The Last Resort. [2]
Hoffman refers to The Last Resort as a 'living history of architectural research', where he directed the construction of over 25 structures that constitute the complex, using low-cost and recycled materials and building techniques he learned throughout his travels.
