Meet RI
Well, hello there.
I’m RI (Rye).
Tea is BAE. Texture matters. Flavor matters even more. And if I come across something I’ve never tasted before, there’s a very good chance I’m going to need to know everything about it.
I’m a New Yorker at heart, spent some years in Georgia and loved it, and these days Texas is home. Each place has given me something different to love about food—but curiosity has always been the common thread.
I like layers. A little heat followed by something sweet. A bright pop of citrus. Smoke where you weren’t expecting it. A crunch that changes the whole bite. Tea that smells so good you stop before you even take the first sip.
Basically, I want my food—and my tea—to have something to say.
That curiosity is how Source & Savor came together.
But tea came first. Sipsy by RI was my first little corner of this world—a place for the tea blends I create and genuinely love. As my curiosity wandered beyond the cup and deeper into the pantry, Source & Savor became the bigger table. Sipsy still has its seat. Always will.
I’m always tasting, tweaking, researching and finding something new to bring home. Sometimes that means creating a blend of my own. Sometimes it means finding something somebody else already does beautifully and simply saying, “Yep. We need that.”
And I don't believe good taste has to be complicated.
Some nights dinner gets the whole production. Other nights we're seasoning something that came out of a box and calling it a day. I support both.
Source & Savor is my little corner for all of it—the things I love, the things I discover and the things I think you should probably taste at least once.
No flavor rules. No pantry judgment.
Just come curious.
I’ll handle the good stuff.
— RI
BUT HOW DID WE GET HERE?
There’s a little more to this story. It starts in the South Bronx, involves Lipton, Carnation, a silver kettle and quite a few years before Source ever met Savor.