With espresso turning into more and more troublesome to domesticate, is North America’s solely native caffeinated plant set to grow to be a café staple? Right this moment, we discover yaupon and its Native American roots.
BY MELINA DEVONEY
BARISTA MAGAZINE ONLINE
Featured photograph courtesy of CatSpring Yaupon
Tariffs on espresso and tea-producing nations have compelled Individuals to show to different sources of caffeine. Lastly, the tariff-immune plant, yaupon is receiving the popularity it deserves as North America’s solely native caffeinated plant.
Seemingly in a single day, yaupon has appeared in merchandise throughout the Southeast: tea luggage, free leaf tea, tea focus, extracts, sparkly immediate tea crystals, kombucha, “matcha,” protein bars—and even skincare. A rising variety of cafés, eating places and bars are utilizing yaupon in iced tea, boba, mocktails, and cocktails. Some cafés even serve yaupon that’s roasted, floor, and pulled as espresso photographs.
The saponins (plant compounds with foaming properties) in yaupon create a clean, crema-like mouthfeel in yaupon espresso and elevates shaken drinks with a foam prime. However yaupon’s biggest declare to fame is being a catalyst for social justice and environmental regeneration. The plant is sparking a renaissance throughout the American agricultural system whereas illuminating its indigenous roots.
What’s Yaupon?
Botanically talking, yaupon (Ilex vomitoria) shouldn’t be a real “tea,” that means it doesn’t come from the Camellia sinensis plant. As a substitute, yaupon is an evergreen shrub that has been brewed in the identical vogue by Native American teams lengthy earlier than tea ever arrived on the continent. Yaupon is intently associated to the caffeinated hollies yerba maté and guayusa.
Yaupon grows natively from what’s now referred to as North Carolina to East Texas, land as soon as stewarded by Indigenous teams such because the Cherokee, Caddo, Timucua, Choctaw, Muscogee, and Catawba, to call just a few. The identify yaupon was borrowed from the Catawba language. Yaupon is a pillar of southeast ecosystems: it grows rapidly, faces nearly no pest, illness or environmental issues, is drought tolerant and gives ecosystem providers resembling meals and refuge for animals, carbon sequestration, and soil erosion prevention. Yaupon requires no irrigation, pesticides or fertilizers to thrive in its pure habitat. The holly is a formidable crop as a result of it matures in about three years, and might be harvested a number of occasions per 12 months.
When yaupon leaves are air-dried or calmly roasted, it may well style like mild, pleasantly grassy inexperienced tea; when the leaves are roasted darker, yaupon tastes just like a black tea with clean, toasted, nutty and maple flavors. As an “espresso” shot, yaupon is paying homage to espresso with natural and darkish chocolate aromas and flavors of pink fruit and oolong tea. In contrast to Camellia sinensis, yaupon has no tannins (astringent, bitter plant compounds), so it’s going to by no means style bitter regardless of how lengthy or what number of occasions it’s steeped.
Caffeine Content material + Well being Advantages
A serving of yaupon tea comprises 25-60 mg of caffeine, which is about 30% lower than espresso and just like inexperienced or black tea. Yaupon comprises a trifecta of purine alkaloids just like caffeine: theophylline, theacrine and theobromine (the happiness compound in chocolate). These alkaloids synergistically create a uniquely regular and centered vitality and euphoric uplift – with out the jitters or crash.
“Preliminary analysis means that (theacrine) interferes much less with sleep, has an extended half life than caffeine, and works in tandem with caffeine to last more,” says Liam Trotzuk, co-founder of Goldholly, which is predicated in New York.
Yaupon additionally boasts a big selection of well being advantages as a result of antioxidant exercise of its many polyphenols and flavonoids.
Why Haven’t Most Individuals Heard of Yaupon?
The brief reply is: Colonialism.
Lengthy earlier than our historic data, almost each Indigenous group alongside what we now name the U.S. Gulf Coast had a yaupon custom and traded it all around the continent.
Yaupon was first documented by Spanish explorers in Texas within the 1540s. All through the seventeenth and 18th centuries, American colonies each drank and exported copious quantities of yaupon to Europe. Within the late 1700s, yaupon saved caffeine-addicted Bostonians when the Boston Tea Get together halted tea imports. All through American historical past, yaupon resurged amongst cohorts that wanted low-cost and native caffeine to hold on—from enslaved African Individuals to troopers in the course of the Civil Warfare and World Wars I and II.
Marginalized populations within the South by no means stopped ingesting yaupon even throughout its malicious rebranding by colonists. “‘Yauponer’ was a colonial derogatory time period that meant you’re too poor to afford imported tea,” says Abianne Falla, founding father of CatSpring Yaupon in Texas and citizen of the Chickasaw Nation.
From the start of America’s colonial historical past, indigeneity, race, and sophistication contributed to waning consumption of yaupon, posits cultural anthropologist Dr. Christine Folch. She explains that Ilex vomitoria was coined by a Scottish botanist who was incentivized by the European tea trade to invoke disgust and “financial sabotage” of this aggressive American tea.
Yaupon doesn’t trigger vomiting, however outsiders misunderstood its position in particular Indigenous purification rituals wherein contributors drank yaupon tea after which intentionally purged by vomiting. Quite the opposite, yaupon was frequently drunk for vitality earlier than battles, hunts and competitions, throughout council conferences, and for therapeutic and non secular connection.
Dr. Folch and different anthropologists blame the erasure of yaupon by the nineteenth century on a conspiratorial financial blow spearheaded by the European tea trade, compounded with the erasure of Indigenous peoples.
“With the compelled relocation and common eradication of thousands and thousands of the Native drinkers, yaupon was a misplaced legacy,” Abianne says.
Turning Over a New Leaf
The ability of yaupon dawned on Abianne throughout one among Texas’ most extreme droughts in 2011: “We misplaced 300 million timber statewide,” Abianne says. “All the things was dying aside from yaupon.”
Abianne dove into researching the resilient plant, and began promoting yaupon at farmers markets quickly after.
Abianne based CatSpring Yaupon in 2012, when nearly no industrial yaupon provide chain existed. Yaupon Brothers was based the identical 12 months in Florida. Now, these corporations are the 2 largest nationwide suppliers of yaupon, increasing the tea to the West Coast with retail, wholesale, direct-to-consumer, meals service and non-public label merchandise. Yaupon Brothers and CatSpring are additionally founding members of the American Yaupon Affiliation, which promotes consciousness, schooling, and accountable stewardship of yaupon.
Yaupon gross sales soared this summer season following a Washington Put up article concerning the tariff-free tea. Nonetheless, the yaupon trade is small in comparison with espresso and tea, and is costlier than imported tea even with out tariffs, says Bryon White, co-founder of Yaupon Brothers.
Extra just lately, Liam realized of yaupon and realized it may reclaim its position as America’s personal caffeinated custom—very similar to Ethiopian heirloom espresso, Taiwanese Camellia sinensis, Japanese matcha, and Argentinian yerba maté. Liam and his co-founders launched Goldholly this 12 months with the purpose of popularizing yaupon within the Northeast. They supply licensed natural yaupon from southern producers, together with CatSpring Yaupon.
CatSpring sees yaupon as excess of a product—they embrace it as a plant that may convey concord again to Texan ecosystems, re-teach us the right way to responsibly steward the land, and empower Indigenous peoples.
Subsequent week, we’ll launch half two of this text sequence, the place we’ll additional talk about modern-day yaupon cultivation and converse extra with the individuals main the motion for accountable yaupon stewardship.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Melina Devoney (she/her) is a barista and freelance author in Los Angeles zeroed in on espresso and agriculture. She goals to amplify the voices of farmers and a range of views throughout the espresso trade, and he or she’s happiest when operating on wooded trails and dancing at live shows.
Subscribe and Extra!
As all the time, you possibly can learn Barista Journal in paper by subscribing or ordering a difficulty.
Learn the October + November 2025 Problem totally free with our digital version.
Totally free entry to greater than 5 years’ value of points, go to our digital version archives right here.
