A NATIVE BREW Reborn
A pervasive plant popular with indigenous tribes grows as a regenerative tea.
by LAURA MALLONEE photographs courtesy of CATSPRING YAUPON
/ COMMUNITY SPR UT
“A lot of the tribes that do have continued traditions … are really protective of [them],” says Falla, who is a citizen of the Chickasaw nation through her paternal grandmother. “They don’t want to talk about it to people outside the tribe.” In the 16th and 17th centuries, Spanish and English settlers adopted the practice of drinking yaupon tea and exported it to England and France. Colonists even drank it to protest the British tax on tea consumption before the Revolutionary War. But by the mid- 19th century, it fell from popularity, partly because racially prejudiced whites dismissed it as a drink for Native and Black people. Despite her ancestry, Falla had never heard of yaupon tea before 2011, when a catastrophic drought hit Texas. On average, less than 15 inches of rain fell across the state that year, killing more than 300 million trees — including a dozen or so of the 100-year-old oaks on her family’s 150-acre property. But the yaupon? “[It] was the only thing still alive,” Falla says. She began reading about the plant and its benefits. One study published in 2007 in the journal Oecologia found it to be “extremely high” in antioxidants like cinnamic acids, flavonoids, and phenols. Though she was living in Washington, D.C., where she worked in community development at the activewear brand Lululemon, she and an older sister, still in Texas, began experimenting with making their own tea.
That means keeping yaupon — which Falla prefers to call “pervasive” rather than “invasive” — in check. In 2023, she started Yaupon AgWorks, a nonprofit dedicated to restoring native commitment grasslands where yaupon dominates. A $1.5 million Conservation Innovation Grant from the U.S. Department of Agriculture will enable the nonprofit to tackle its first 500 acres, helping convert depleted ranchland into a thriving savanna populated with native grasses and oaks, where yaupon plays a crucial role as an understory plant, providing berries for birds and shade for deer. “It’s not an eradication of yaupon,” Falla says, “but rather a return to balance.”
“She’s shipping me Ziploc baggies with, like, Post-it notes of, ‘I made this in the oven. I made this on the wok,’” Falla says. “I’m literally just pulling these leaves out, crushing them by hand, steeping them, and giving her feedback.” Their ingenuity would likely have made their grandfather Donald Smith, a food-technology inventor who patented everything from convection ovens to chicken-processing equipment, proud. And it paid off: In 2013, the sisters launched CatSpring Yaupon, which has since produced leaves for more than 4 million cups of tea. (Falla’s sister left the company in 2016.) Today, its products are on the menu at 150 restaurants and on the shelves of 125 stores across the United States, with international customers in Australia, the U.K., and Japan. It’s one of the biggest players in the global yaupon market, which has been projected to grow by more than 8%, to reach $10 million, by 2030. CatSpring Yaupon harvests its leaves from 1,400 acres of private land in Austin County, where its namesake town and manufacturing facility is located. But while the source is plentiful, evergreen, and hardy — a “foolproof” crop, Falla says — it still needs to be thoughtfully managed so it doesn’t take over. That’s why, in 2021, Falla’s company became certified in regenerative agriculture, a label she says helps customers “recognize what our commitment to the land is.”
When Abianne Falla was 12 years old, her dad handed her a machete and told her to go “chip away” at the bushes that crowded her family’s fence line in Cat Spring, Texas, an hour west of Houston. The shrubs were yaupon holly, which sprouts new shoots from its roots, creating thickets so dense that deer have trouble passing through. Falla, now 38, could never have guessed she’d make a career out of those bushes. Her company, CatSpring Yaupon, produces tea from the plant’s leaves, which are the only known source of caffeine native to North America. “There are no tannins, so you can’t oversteep it,” Falla tells The Rooted Journal. “It also means you can easily get three to four cups out of one bag.”
Yaupon is native to the Southeast and Gulf regions of the United States. Its name derives from the Native American Catawba word for “small tree.” Indigenous peoples across North America traded the plant, and archaeologists have found its residue in pottery in Illinois dating to 1050 A.D. Many consumed it as a beverage for medicinal and ceremonial purposes by roasting and boiling its leaves. Some still do so today.
T HER OFFICE IN SOUTH AUSTIN, Texas, she brews me a cup of the Marfa, a dark roast that she likens to black tea, though it contains less than half as much caffeine (about 25 milligrams). After it steeps a few minutes, I lift the bag to check the liquid’s color, catching a grassy whiff that evokes yerba maté, a South American beverage also made from holly. I take a sip and find it’s a little less earthy, more nutty and sweet. “It’s way more approachable,” Falla says.
Visit CATSPRINGTEA.COM to learn more.
40
41
ISSUE 02
Made with FlippingBook. PDF to flipbook with ease