ISSUE 40, HOLIDAY GIFTS, Part 5: Yaupon Tea
Yaupon Tea
As some of you know the South possesses a natural caffeine bearing planting--Yaupon-a holly whose two forms--Ilex cassine and Ilex vomitoria--were Native medicinal and ritual plants. Besides the usual stimulus supplied by caffeine, Yaupon was consumed as a system cleanser. Native medicine favored periodic rituals of purgation and physical elevation. Hence the more shocking of the two Latin names for Yaupon plants.
Americans rarely encounter a drug they don’t embrace. After the publication of the Edwin Moses monograph Ilex Cassine The Aboriginal North American Tea in 1891, cultivators were alerted to the commercial possibility. https://www.google.com/books/edition/Ilex_Cassine/4LpniudSCskC?hl=en&gbpv=1&dq=Ilex+Cassine&printsec=frontcover
An attempt to create an industry was thwarted in the 1910s by the active interference of tea merchants in the U. S. In the past decade the ambition to organize a yaupon industry have resulted in the formation of several companies offering a range of products. Why bother, when the tea industry is so entrenched? Because the Yaupon has so much more vibrant chemistry than caffeine. It has theobromine--the active agent in chocolate-and theophyline, a potent vascular dilator that will cause your circulation system to expand and quicken blood circulation in a rush.
Rachel Young of YAYAYA Yaupon company sent me three of her six offerings after reading that I had recommended the Yaupon Brothers green Yaupon tea on my 50 food gifts recommendation list. This morning I brew the straight unflavored tea. I found it smooth, with a hint of menthone (perhaps the antioxidant flavanol Isorhamnetin). It was altogether agreeable. Being strongly disinclined to tisanes and flavored teas, I probably will not indulge in the rose petal or mint flavored lines of the tea. But I'm sure the straight Yaupon will find a place in my tea cabinet. The stimulent effect of the tea is even--none of the brain pinch of a double espresso.
https://drinkyayaya.com/
The price is right for these items, the novelty factor high, and the history rich. Use your own judgment regarding flavored varieties. Or you can be a Puritan like me an choose the unflavored natural dried fermented leaf.