Celebrate the Holidays with a Yaupon Holly Revival and Tasting

provided to Santiva Chronicle

Join the Sanibel Captiva Conservation Foundation from 1 to 3 p.m. Tuesday, Dec. 17 at the Bailey Homestead Preserve for a festive afternoon celebrating Yaupon Holly. Bryon White, one of the founders of Yaupon Brothers Tea in Volusia County, Fla., will talk about the revival of Yaupon Holly, its use as a tea, and the burgeoning tea industry in Florida.

The program will be followed by a Yaupon tea tasting featuring samples of food made with tea prepared by the vibrant and joyful Jackie Vitale, Chef-in-Residence at the Robert Rauschenberg Foundation on Captiva.

Yaupon Brothers Tea was founded by brothers Bryon and Kyle White, who reintroduced Yaupon Holly into commerce in 2012, for the first time in over 100 years. Humans have been consuming Yaupon Holly as a food, medicinal, and ritual tea for ten thousand years. Native cultures, and later, colonists and modern Americans consumed it. The Timucua people of Florida believed that Yaupon helped them achieve mental and physical purity.

The Yaupon Brothers are reviving it as America’s Tea. Come learn more and try it.

RSVP through Eventbrite; $20 registration, includes a canister of Yaupon tea bags. Participants will be given a 10% discount on gifts in the SCCF’s Native Landscapes & Garden Center and on the purchase of a Yaupon Holly plant. Meet at the Pavilion at the Bailey Homestead Preserve, 1300 Periwinkle Way. Please call the Garden Center at 239-472-1932 with questions.