Harvest Moon Yaupon Chocolate Chai
Harvest Moon is dark and decadent brew of dark roasted Texas yaupon holly leaf and heirloom cacao ignited with rich chai spices. Yaupon Holly holds the torch of being the only caffeinated plant native to the United States, having been long brewed upon the indigenous southeastern tribes for medicine and ceremony. So valued was this tea that it was extensively traded into the west, finding its way into the pots of the people of the American Southwest and Northwestern Mexico, alongside cacao, traded north from Mesoamerica. Cacao, long revered among the Olmecs, Mayans, and later the Aztecs, held similar status among the native people for its stimulating and fortifying effects, as well as its role in religious ceremony and medicine. Indeed, yaupon and cacao marry beautifully, both containing theobromine (the alkaloid named for cacao's moniker as "the food of the gods"). While cacao has a marginal amount of caffeine, yaupon contains about 1/3 of the caffeine of a cup of coffee, while also c