During a recent bout of seasonal allergies, I learned that nettle tea is a folk remedy for hay fever. That sparked my curiosity about herbal teas and ones made here locally.
Herbal tea is a confusing term because it doesn’t have any actual tea leaves in it. Instead, it’s a melange of other plants. Some refer to these steeped beverages as tisanes to avoid confusion.
In the United States, herbal teas are treated as nutritional supplements, like vitamins, which means they don’t undergo the rigorous efficacy reviews required for pharmaceuticals. Sellers can’t make medical claims about teas.
After spending a week drinking tea and interviewing the people who make tea, I came to the conclusion that the more you work with these plants, the more you start to believe they want to heal us. Nonetheless, all of the tea makers I spoke to caution customers to take herbal medicine seriously and check with their primary medical providers to make sure teas can be safely consumed with other drugs or pre-existing conditions.
Sadly, we don’t have a mid-day tea ritual that is common elsewhere in the world. It’s a soothing ritual that can be beneficial in more ways than one. Tea is a sensory experience. You can watch the herbs as the hot water opens them up and breathe in the array of aromas while a warm mist fills your nostrils and soothes the skin on your face. Abandon devices and other distractions and slowly sip, focusing on the flavors that fill your mouth. Just 15 minutes spent in this simple ritual provides a brief respite to help embrace the challenges of the day with fresh energy.
Here are four local suppliers.
Dilish Farm
22904 N.E. 58th St., Vancouver; 360-947-8992; www.dilishfarm.com
Dillon and Trish Haggerty grow many things on their small family farm.
“There are many plants here you can’t find elsewhere,” Trish Haggerty said.
She has studied various medicinal herb books and dries plants from her farm to create her herbal tea. Some plants have been grown intentionally and some just appear. No matter, Haggerty finds them all interesting.
“I don’t look at a single weed without thinking why is this here,” she said.
On my recent visit to her greenhouse, seedlings were sprouting in containers on tables, but Haggerty was more focused on pointing out the things naturally growing on the ground. She showed me lambsquarters and Queen Anne’s lace, cress and sorrel, and encouraged me to try each and pay attention to the citrus and green apples flavors that filled my mouth.
The teas she makes are grown, dried and packaged on her farm. She sells them as individual dried plant bits and not as blends so her customers can play with the mini apothecary she has created. (Boxes range from $20 to $40). She wants customers to learn about the plants themselves and make blends to suit their needs.
A kit that I bought from her included hawthorn, mullein, sunflower petals, calendula, rose petals, English lavender and mint. Each herb came in a plastic bag labeled with the name of the plant and some information. I enjoyed taking bits of each and making my own herbal tea blends. When steeped in water, each herb sprang back to life. The water bloomed with color and spread a garden mist of aromas.
Blooming Artichoke Herbary
www.bloomingartichoke.com
Colleen Gundolfi became fascinated with herbs and spices while living in England. She visited a small bookstore there and felt drawn to a short book on herbs and spices. Thirty years later, she continues to study the healing properties of plants. She’s a member of the American Herbalist Guild and has a master’s degree in complementary and alternative medicine. She uses this knowledge to create tea blends for her Castle Rock-based business, Blooming Artichoke Herbary. She doesn’t grow the herbs and teas in her tea blends on her 6½-acre farm, but carefully sources them and makes sure they are high quality before adding them to her tea (2-ounce bags $12 each or three for $32, ½-ounce bags $5 each or three for $12).
She created Tummy Tea for herself to battle an inflammatory condition. She used marshmallow leaf, meadowsweet, chamomile, ginger, fennel and thyme to ease these symptoms. One day, she thought that having a drinkable meadow would be lovely. This was the inspiration for her Fairy Meadow Tea with dandelion leaf, alfalfa, lemon balm, rose, orange peel, basil, angelica root and nutmeg.
I visited her Vancouver Farmers Market booth and noticed her Crazy Cat Person Tea with catnip, white tea, cleavers, and peppermint. I didn’t know people could consume catnip.
“Catnip has a long history of use for people. It’s a mint, rich in volatile oils, it’s been used to settle the stomach or combat a fever. Cats have claimed catnip, but it’s just another mint,” Gundolfi said.
Blooming Artichoke currently sells 13 different teas with two more in the works — a fiery Dragon Tea with chiles and a Respiratory Tea. As she develops the recipes, Gundolfi has her husband, Tom, test them.
“He hates tea,” she said, “so we use a yuck scale. If it’s tolerable for him then I have a winner.”
Based on her vast knowledge of herbal medicine, Gundolfi worries about people who don’t take herbs seriously, mix them with other medications, and don’t talk to their primary health provider about how they may interact with other drugs or negatively impact pre-existing conditions.
“I worry about people diving into herbal medicine without knowledge,” she said.
Valhalla Tea Co.
14602 N.E. Fourth Plain Blvd.; 360-726-518; valhallatea.com
Chris Baldwin of Valhalla Tea Company doesn’t have a farm but developed an interest in tea to heal his own PTSD and anxiety. Baldwin served in the military for 10 years. After returning from deployment in Afghanistan, a close friend with whom he served died by suicide. Shortly after, Baldwin found himself in a hospital emergency room with extremely high blood pressure. He spent 16 hours there. His head felt like it was shorting out and the doctors thought he was having a stroke. All of the tests came back fine, but he was told that he needed to change his life.
Baldwin did some research and decided to give up caffeine. (He was drinking a lot of energy drinks.) He found that tea was something that helped improve mental health. The ritual of making tea and drinking it fit with the 333 method of managing PTSD and anxiety. This grounding technique requires the person suffering from anxiety to look around to identify three objects, three sounds and then move three body parts. Making tea fits with this method because the tea maker must slow down and be in the moment. It’s also ritualistic: You put the tea in a strainer, pour over hot water, wait, and then sip. Drinking tea is a sensory experience that is slow, calming and brings a person back in touch with their body.
Baldwin’s first blend was All Father, a mix of cinnamon pieces, licorice root, ginger, fennel, orange peel and cardamom. This drink was inspired by similar formulations used in India for calming the nerves.
Valhalla Tea is sold in samples ($3.99), small packets ($11.99), 4-ounce glass skulls ($32.50), and 1-pound vacuum-sealed bags ($79.99).
I tried Goddess of War, a black tea with lavender, cinnamon, and vanilla; Freyja, with green tea, goji berries, lemongrass, pomegranate arils and blue cornflower blossoms; and Goddess of Night, with valerian root, apple, fennel, elderberries, rose hip peel, chamomile, raspberry leaves, lemon verbena, lavender and freeze-dried raspberries. These teas stood out for their bold flavors and fruitiness. They’re sweet from the fruits, berries, herbs and roots mixed in them and don’t require additional sugar.
“I like a kaleidoscope of flavor,” Baldwin said. “Veterans have all of this negative information in their heads. What do we do for them? We make sure we don’t forget these amazing heroes. A man without a purpose is lost. This is my purpose.”
Dandelion Teahouse & Apothecary
109 W. Seventh St., Vancouver; 360-718-7642; dandelionteahouse.com
Mother-daughter team Marianne Wilson Stein and Kat Stein opened their lovely downtown tea house in 2021. Both women bring a long history working with plants to their shop and cafe. Marianne was drawn to growing food when she was pregnant. She wanted her children to grow up knowing how to grow food to feed themselves.
“I’m not an herbalist and I’m not a chemist,” she said, “but I know how plants go together. I understand plant magic.”
She sources a lot of her plant material from Mountain Rose Herbs in Eugene, Ore.
Kat Stein created the shop’s most recent tea series that has a tea for every zodiac sign. A series of teas based on the seven chakras is in the works.
All tea recipes are developed at the tea house in their apothecary on the top floor. Each tea is mixed by hand according to a recipe.
“We do infuse our tea and skin care products with Reiki. When we make the mix, we use our hands with gloves. We bring good energy into the tea. Reiki is the use of life force energy,” Kat Stein said.
Dandelion Tea blends ($4) and individual dried herbs ($1.50-$8) are available at their downtown shop along with a regular menu of tea drinks, such as the Vancouver Fog, an Earl Grey tea latte sweetened with house-made vanilla bean syrup ($5) as well as a monthly menu developed by Kat Stein. For April, she added a luscious pistachio matcha latte topped with whipped cream and sprinkles called The Nutty Professor ($5.25).
