Journal

How to brew loose-leaf without overthinking it

No infuser, no thermometer: loose-leaf takes a strainer, a kettle, and the number on the pouch. The doses and steep times for all four blends, plus the one exception worth knowing.

What Is Camu Camu? The Amazon Fruit Too Sour to Eat

Fresh camu camu is almost too sour to eat, which is why the Peruvian Amazon juices, pulps, and blends it. Where the flooded-forest fruit comes from, and what it does in Gather.

What Is Muña? The Wild Mint of the Andes

Muña: the wild Andean mint behind the highlands' after-meal cup, and why it is not the black mint in Rooted.

Most evening tea isn't tea.

Sleepytime, Bedtime, Calm: the classic blends on the American bedtime shelf are tisanes, no tea leaf in the formula. Dusk is actual tea, and the black leaf is there for structure.

The After-Meal Tea America Never Imported

In Chile and Peru, lunch closes with a cup of boldo, a slow-growing, wild-harvested tree leaf. The plant, the after-lunch cup it makes, and why it anchors Rooted.

What the Organic Seal Verifies

Three years of soil records, an annual inspection, and a fee that lands hardest on small farms: what the USDA Organic seal proves, and how to read a tea label with or without it.

Peruvian Cardamom: The Cloud-Forest Spice in Daybreak

Nearly all the world's cardamom comes from India or Guatemala. Daybreak's grows in Peru's central cloud forest, under the coffee canopy of Villa Rica.

A Loose-Leaf Tea Gift That Isn't Matcha

About 25 cups across four blends, one for each part of the day. How to judge any loose-leaf tea gift, and how to match the blend to the person.