STiR coffee and tea magazine

STiR coffee and tea 27 struggled and fizzled. There is a need to plant seed varieties that can survive Oregon winters. Oregon wines provide an encourag- ing precedent. Angela McDonald, the owner of Oregon Tea Traders and one of the two leaders of the January assembly, states that "Wines here never got much recognition until they started to differentiate taste. They were just bad mimics." She and Jason McDonald, the founder of the Great Mississippi Tea Company (they are not related), laid out the opportunities for teas that would have a unique regional flavor, just as Willamette Valley pinot noir wines do, with angles for agritourism. She asks, "Can you imagine a yoga or meditation retreat on a tea farm? A farm-to-cup drinking experience? I can." Oregon already has an established small tea grower, the Minto Island Tea Company, that first planted its half-acre plot in 1988, with production starting in 1992. Jason McDonald calls tea a "hundred-year crop." Growers have to burn cash for the first six years before the plants produce harvestable leaf. He presented figures derived from his own experience from around six years of tea growing. He says, "Honestly, growing tea is like having a money-printing machine if you do it right." The case rests on a small acreage that produces a distinctive specialty tea. One acre is the largest an individual can manage, with around 4,750 plants. Most small growers in Oregon have only hundreds of bushes. McDonald estimates that the revenues are at least $42,750 for a one-acre operation. That is the equiva- lent of 4.2 acres of blueberries and 26 to 35 of ryegrass. A cooperative of 25 growers would provide the critical mass to share seed purchase costs, develop a skilled labor pool for harvesting, build a central processing facility, and scale marketing and selling expertise. As a collective, they would promote an Oregon tea brand. The figures seem optimistic espe- cially in that they do not address distribution. Minto Island tea is not sold online or available via Amazon. The only largescale national brand is Oregon Chai in Portland, which manufactures chais, concentrates, sweeteners, lattes, bever- age mixers, and flavoring sauces. It doesn't grow anything and is owned by Kerry, a very large Irish firm. The logic of the tea cooperative is small and unique. That has its pluses and minuses. The likelihood of it producing some first-rate Oregon-branded teas seems quite high. Avocado Tea An article published in mid-2019 entitled, "Are Avocados the Future of Tea?" asks a provocative question whose answer depends on what the proven health benefits of the tea are. There is only a small and fragmented body of scientific reports that point to an answer. Perhaps, though, the question should be flipped from 2019 to, say, 1419 A.D. or even 7800 B.C., and restated as, "Are Wild Avocados the Future of Medicine?" That's how early avocado seeds can be carbon-dated in Mexican caves that were occupied by humans. There's a lot of non-scientific but convincing evidence that avocados are packed with the same compounds as tea that have been shown to contrib- ute to wellness. In addition, avocado was, for millennia, core to traditional medicine in the Americas and Caribbean. The whole leaves of the plant were boiled to extract the high concentration of antioxidants, tannins, saponins, serotonin, and quercetin, all of which are associated with specific curative impacts. Saponins, for example, help pass kidney stones, and quercetin seems to reduce inflammation. As with Ayurvedic, Native American, and Chinese traditional medicine, traditions of Aztec and Central Ameri- can cultures have been gaining both respect and attention in recent years. There are three main reasons: the focus on plants, the longevity of treatments and methods, and the naturopathic tradition of treatment. Botanicals offer safety, quality, and efficacy. Around 25% of all prescription drugs in the US contain at least one active ingredient derived from plants. Traditional medicine generates a test lab based on long periods of history rather than experiments. The practitioners may not have known why something worked, but over centuries those treatments that were effective were passed on and, in turn, refined. Others fell into disuse, and failures meant a loss of credibility (and patients). Innovations had a context for creativity, a base on which to build, and a network of dissemination paths. Finally, the entire modern trend in medicine, food, and beverages is to seek out the natural and minimize the risks of chemical interactions and side effects. Avocado tea fits into this historical pattern. There's a rich literature on the varieties of fruit, their trade, and the main therapies. The research literature doesn't have much to say about the effectiveness of the treatments but confirms the constituents of the avocado leaf that support the claim that it is the healthiest in nature. The first widely distributed avocado teas came on the market at the end of 2019, and there are now around a dozen brands positioned to build a new market segment. Sales of avocados to eat doubled between 2000 and 2010. Prices, though, have soared, doubling in the year 2017-18. This reflects growing demand and year-round consumption, Mexico-US trade discord, and California harvest shortages. The tea itself requires special produc- tion processes, just as do cold brew and bubble tea. Several of these have been patented. The leaf is not easy to bag; it is fibrous and larger than those of tradi- tional teas. The favor is described as earthy, smooth, and less astringent than Fog in Oregon's Willamette Valley Avocado plant: the future of tea ?

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