A Behind-the-Scenes Glimpse at Our New Palo Santo Tea
Wait, so I can actually drink palo santo?
Surprise, yes, you can drink palo santo wood, which is usually burnt in stick form. You can make it a tea by steeping the wood shavings in hot water. (You can also drink sage, another commonly burned object.)
So, why palo santo tea?
It's the new year and we figured that everyone is due for a spiritual cleansing. Seeing as how palo santo is an ancient Latin American healing plant, we thought this would be the perfect "fresh start" plant.
What's the story?
"Palo santo" means "holy stick" or "holy wood" in Spanish. Native to Latin America, indigenous cultures have supposedly been using it for thousands of years as traditional medicine. These trees live from 80 to 90 years, and after dying they have to remain in their original spot for 4 to 10 years before they're harvestable.
Common uses include burning it as incense, diluting it into an essential oil, and drinking it as a tea. Over the years, it's spread all over the world and is very popular today with the health-conscious crowd.
Its benefits are supposedly wide, including purifying negative energy and reducing inflammation, headaches, asthma, and anxiety.
Our palo santo process
After ordering palo santo samples, we found that hand-carving it with a knife makes for beautiful, curly shavings, as opposed to having it pre-cut.
We cut the shavings with other herbs not only for beautifying purposes, but to reduce the strong, bitter taste of the palo santo—I mean, we love it, but moderation and subtlety is key. These herbs are renowned for their health benefits: we included passion flower, rosemary, lemongrass, blue cornflower, and goji berries. It has more ingredients than any other of our teas, yet, we've found it tastes very unified and pure.
How to brew it
You have to steep this blend a little bit longer than your average tea: 5-10 minutes will do it, since wood takes longer to release its flavor into hot water. It tastes a lot more bitter than our other teas, but just think of it as a spiritual cleansing experience!
You can find our Palo Santo Tea in this month's Tea Box (and we're also offering some deals too—January's box is free with a yearly plan, and our new tea filters come free with both the yearly and monthly plan). We'll be releasing our Palo Santo Tea as a standalone tea next month, hopefully, so you can get it then, too!
Happy purifying.