Cristina Patwa’s tea-rrific journey from Davao to Hollywood and working with Brad Pitt
It’s a long way from Buhangin, Davao City, to Hollywood; from dirt roads and riding carabaos to running a business for Brad Pitt, but Cristina Patwa has made that journey in less than her 42 years on earth.
I actually mistook Patwa for a teenager when I came in to interview her. When I remarked on her youthful looks, this mother of an eight-year-old girl laughed and said, “It must be the teas.”
“The teas” in question belong to Enroot, a sparkling tea beverage brand Patwa cofounded along with Pitt and John Fogelman, a Hollywood agent-turned-entrepreneur who’s a dear friend of both.
“My business partner of 15 years, John and I have built different businesses together,” Patwa says. “John was one of the largest shareholders of a talent agency called William Morris, and he has known Brad for 25 years. They've been friends for 25 projects.
“We have another business with Brad,” she continues. “We helped him with something in (Chateau) Miraval (the French winery he co-owned with ex-wife Angelina Jolie), and then over dinner together, Brad came up with the idea of this wellness, alcohol-free experience.” The idea was Enroot, a line of sparkling, cold-brew tea beverages that would fill a niche in the non-alcoholic beverage market for a bubbly drink like champagne. Patwa, Pitt and Fogelman called in a group of 12 James Beard Award-winning chefs to develop and blend flavors that could be paired with elevated cuisine.
At a brewery in Santa Cruz, California, they cold-brew organic fruit and floral purees in small batches with the best teas from around the world for three days, resulting in a low-calorie drink (only 25 calories a bottle) that is refreshing, low-sugar (no sugar or stevia is added), and a healthy alternative to not only champagne but also sodas.
“Brad was the one who came up with the idea,” notes Patwa. “He is insanely creative. I think that's what it takes to be a movie star for that long. He's artistic, he's genuine, he's authentic, and so even the design of (the bottle) — every part of it was really his direction and his vision for what this could look and feel like. My job is to listen to him, because he's actually quite detailed in the way he even holds the bottle, the way he selects the bottle, the color palette — he just wore an outfit like this to the Bullet Train premiere with this color (she holds up a bottle of Enroot’s Strawberry Lavender-Rosemary Tulsi Relax flavor that has the Bullet Train logo on the back, and ladybug artwork on the front), which is more like a salmon color. And this we did for his movie, Bullet Train. You remember his character, Ladybug, and how his character wants to find peace? So the Relax is to help calm and promote finding peace. This is actually for the movie collaboration with him, which is amazing. Everybody I know loves the way it presents. Everything inside (Enroot) is the chefs’; everything outside is Brad.”
Patwa grew up in Buhangin, Davao, until she was eight years old.
“Davao then was a lot of dirt roads, a lot of farms. There's pictures of me with a carabao, and I was afraid of the geese,” she laughs. “I didn't know there was a whole world outside of our farms, my grandmother and the community — you knew everybody and everybody knew you — it felt like a real family.
“We moved to the US when I was eight, and I would spend a lot of time with my grandmother because both parents had to work. You know, it's immigrants, we're in Queens, we need to survive. And so I spent a lot of time with my grandma, and we would come back to the Philippines every other year growing up.
“The most joyful parts of my childhood were with my grandmother or here in the Philippines, because in the US, Christmas is not celebrated the same way — the feeding each other and making sure you’re okay. Filipinos naturally think of the other person first before ourselves. And I wish that the US had more of that, where we can break bread and take care of somebody across from you. That connection is actually a foundation of building a community, and I want Enroot to be a community, first and foremost.”
Patwa’s lola passed away last January, at the age of 96.
“I wanted to pay tribute to what she gifted me with. She was planting seeds along the way, the overall model of the kind of woman I am and want to be. I'm glad she got to see at least the launch of Enroot and she knew what I was building it for.”
Patwa is a staunch tea drinker herself. “When I became a mom, I couldn't have as much caffeine and alcohol,” she says. “I just love teas. I drink a lot of tea.”
Part of her trip here is to find farms from which Enroot can source ingredients. “Because we source organic, it means by default that the big farms are the conventional ones that are not organic, and most organic farms are smaller. So we have coconut in this (flavor), and I would love to find jasmine — I loved the sampaguitas growing up — and the hibiscus, the gumamelas. It would be amazing because we're trying to source them where they're indigenously grown already. And then we have another flavor that will come out that has mango and ginger, and that's like my hometown flavors. I would love that.”
Enroot is a sustainable, socially responsible brand that also supports women’s programs, and Patwa says that Pitt is a partner who believes and understands the importance of those values. “Once he heard everything he came up with (their trademark) ‘Food, Family, Farms.’ He loves the simplicity of things. He and John were the ones who pushed me and said, ‘You need to run this. This is you.’ And I said, ‘I’m an accountant. What do I know?’ But they're so wonderful as partners and so supportive. I couldn't ask for better partners in something that's so meaningful in a lot of different ways. I feel very blessed.”
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Enroot is available at Drinkenroot.com. Join them @drinkenroot on Instagram.
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