The Black Drink Bungle
Was it ineptitude? A simple misunderstanding? Or something more nefarious that made modern life so hard for the storied yaupon holly?
Hello and welcome to Give Me Weird Drinks, a newsletter for exploring the world of beverages! Today is a special Thursday edition about the mysterious Black Drink and its evergreen main ingredient.
Hundreds, if not thousands, of years ago, early North Americans were producing and drinking a truly unique beverage. Made principally from the leaves of a native tree, the drink was more than a caffeinated source of antioxidants. It grew to become the hub of social and communal gatherings, in a way that would be familiar to many modern denizens of cafes and teahouses. For some of its early drinkers, it even became part of sacred rituals.
Shared during religious ceremonies and before ball games, as news was discussed or while big decisions were being made, its appearance served to demarcate important moments in time. It was so important, some saw it as a human purifier: indigenous people would drink and vomit the beverage as they cleansed their bodies, readying themselves for a higher purpose.
While most local indigenous names for the drink have been lost, the Muscogee, or Creek, Nation called the drink “ā-cee” or “asi.” More commonly, however, it was simply known as “Black Drink.”
A Black Drink ceremony engraving by Theodor de Bry, published in 1591 (Duke University Libraries)
Evidence from the famous North American archaeological site of Cahokia (near present-day St. Louis) points to consumption of “an imported luxury,” Black Drink, dating back to 1050 CE. Some archaeologists think the beverage’s ceremonialism could possibly be 3,000 years old.
Centuries later, historical accounts from Europeans, dating to the 1500s, described widespread consumption of the drink from Texas to Florida.
Today, Black Drink is all but a mystery. Its disappearance is all the more enigmatic (and scandalous) because it is a beverage that 100 million Americans could be making, in one form or another, with a common tree practically growing in their front yards.
But there’s a group of tenacious foragers, entrepreneurs, academics and enthusiasts that would like to see an end to the whitewashing of Black Drink—or at least give the tree responsible for so much buzz a chance at new recognition.
Living in a state known for beaches, golf carts and orange juice, Bryon White tends to start his days a little differently than most Floridians, or even most Americans. It’s not OJ he reaches for, or even coffee; it’s tea made from a tree.
White’s morning beverage comes from yaupon holly, a shrubby, small evergreen that grows in the backlots, forests and ranches next door to millions of Americans. The U.S. federal government has identified this particular holly, known for its drought resistance and decorative berries, as the only native North American plant that contains caffeine.
A yaupon holly tree in Cat Spring, Texas (CatSpring Yaupon)
It might seem odd for a tree with antioxidant levels comparable to blueberries and a similar pick-me-up to that of Asian tea to be hidden in plain sight, unrecognizable to most die-hard tea drinkers.
But that’s exactly what’s happened.
And some don’t believe it’s an innocent tale of forgotten history.
From the 1500s to the 1700s, explorers, Quakers and everyone in between wrote about yaupon-based beverages. While Spaniards were obsessed with chocolate (which was originally consumed as a drink), they also started drinking beverages brewed with yaupon holly. “It is more of a vice than chocolate in New Spain,” bemoaned one Florida-based priest in 1615, according to a history of the beverage compiled by William Sturtevant for Charles Hudson’s book, Black Drink: A Native American Tea.
Both drinks were new to Europeans. Both gave them a buzz they’d never had before.
More than a century later, a doctor recognized the diuretic properties of drink made from yaupon holly—as well as its potential as a mixer in the 1700s-version of a cocktail. “It is likewise used as Tea, and in making Punch,” noted Dr. John Bricknell in 1737. (There was no mention of arrack, but yaupon has since found its way into amaro.)
Different roasts of processed yaupon holly (CatSpring Yaupon)
Yaupon holly tea was primarily a breakfast drink by the 1700s, wrote Sturtevant, consumed in the coastal regions of colonial America. It was even traded with Europe.
But then, something changed. Between the early 1700s and late 1800s, yaupon consumption went from fueling trans-Atlantic trade to something “scorned as a rural habit” and all but lost to history by the 1970s.
It was enough of a change that one modern botanist thinks industrial subterfuge was to blame.
In the 1700s, yaupon wasn’t called yaupon, it was called cassina or Appalachina by the English and French, according to Dr. Francis “Jack” Putz, a botanist at the University of Florida. The “asi” found in “cassina” was, of course, one of the Muscogee names for Black Drink.
The Merriam-Webster Dictionary cites indigenous origins for the word “cassina” and notes that it was used by some to identify the yaupon holly. The word came from a tribe that lived in northern Florida, called the Timucua, where wild yaupon still grows today. The tribe, however, was decimated by Europeans and its survivors may have joined the Seminoles.
But the famous Scottish botanist William Aiton apparently had no need for indigenous names—or even European names. Sometime in the mid-1700s, Aiton decided the scientific community, as well as horticulturalists and anyone else flexing their Latin, should henceforth know the yaupon holly as Ilex vomitoria: vomitory holly.
“I believe [Aiton] was secretly in the employ of Ceylon tea merchants,” noted Dr. Putz, in a letter published by The Gainesville Sun. “Researchers have revealed no emetic compounds in yaupon tea; it simply does not induce vomiting.”
“It could be an example of early corporate false advertising,” added Abianne Falla, co-founder of CatSpring Yaupon, in Cat Spring, Texas.
To make matters more confusing—and add insult to injury for yaupon lovers—the Latin name for the dahoon holly, a plant with an overlapping range to that of yaupon but no practical use as a beverage ingredient, was given the botanical name Ilex cassine.
Perhaps Aiton was reading too many accounts of purging rituals associated with Black Drink, perhaps he was in the employ of the East India Company, perhaps he had had one too many cups of cassina, but the damage was done. With a name like Ilex vomitoria, yaupon holly was all but tattooed with a noxious green “V,” for vomit.
Today’s entrepreneurs, however, see yaupon’s Latin name as just another obstacle to overcome. Those in the yaupon business know they have a product that tastes great, is healthy for the consumer and grows close to a potential customer base of 100 million Americans, said Bryon White, CEO and co-founder of Yaupon Brothers, an Edgewater, Fla.-based yaupon tea producer.
Along with a handful of producers across the southeast United States, White is trying to expand the 250,000 or so yaupon drinkers into something more sizable. He launched a trade association, the American Yaupon Association, and works with researchers at the University of Florida who are exploring yaupon as an alternative to citrus crops.
“Farming yaupon is going to be the future,” White said. While today’s producers are able to keep selling yaupon in the market they have, White said a push to reach just 1% of the American tea drinking population, some 1.6 million consumers, would necessitate a massive increase in yaupon production. “You’re talking about 2 to 3 million pounds per year,” he said. “You can’t do that with wild production.”
But the real question is taste. Coming from a plant called Ilex vomitoria, what does yaupon tea taste like?
Green tea drinkers might find flavor similarities in green yaupon tea, minus the biting bitterness that can develop from oversteeping Asian tea. Roasted yaupon develops a fruitier sweetness, which changes with a deepening roast.
“Most people would equate the flavor to a robust green tea,” said Sean Sherman, founder, chef and CEO of The Sioux Chef, a caterer and food education business focused on indigenous foods that’s based in Minneapolis, Minn. “You can get a much darker flavor. It depends on how far you roast it down.”
“There’s a lot of people who don’t like coffee but would probably be turned on to something indigenous to North America,” he added. “It’s a super interesting plant.”
Once roasted, flavor changes based on how long the yaupon is shelved, or stored, added Falla.
Storing product is a common way of creating distinct flavors in yaupon’s southerly cousin, yerba mate. In fact, both yerba mate and yaupon tea are made from different species of holly trees.
Yaupon tea, ready to brew (CatSpring Yaupon)
But Dr. Putz refutes the comparison to yerba mate. “Recent taste tests conducted at [the University of Florida] revealed an overwhelming preference for yaupon over its commercially available South American sister species, ‘yerba mate,’” he wrote in a 2010 article. “Unfortunately, yaupon’s commercial potential was destroyed simply by the revelation of its scientific name.”
White also prefers to avoid the yerba mate comparison, drawing more connections between yaupon and another (weird) drink, which comes from another South American holly: guayusa.
But it’s not just storage that changes yaupon’s character. The plant’s natural range spans from Maryland to Texas, so a yaupon exposed to greater seasonal variation in Texas will have a different taste, and even look, than a yaupon lazing about in Florida’s humid undergrowth.
Like Asian tea, yaupon leaf flushes have different flavors, but they’re so labor intensive to harvest that they’re not commercially viable, said Falla. CatSpring Yaupon has had to build much of its own processing equipment, while Yaupon Brothers was able to repurpose some machines from Asian tea producers.
In fact, different processing techniques present a whole new realm of possibilities for yaupon producers. “We’ve only scratched the surface on the ways we can be processing,” said Falla.
CatSpring Yaupon’s wild harvest techniques mean the company pasteurizes its product. Falla steers clear of open-flame roasting, concerned about producing unwanted compounds into the final product. White, however, channels the ghost of the original yaupon producers with a technique involving fire roasting in a large cauldron.
Beaker from the Cahokia area (L. Brian Stauffer/Univ. of Illinois Urbana-Champaign)
So if yaupon tea, despite its scientific name, is delicious enough to have been consumed for potentially three millennia and is a viable commercial product today, what was in the original Black Drink? Why was there enough documentation that Aiton felt comfortable labeling yaupon as vomitory holly and calling it a day?
Maybe vomiting on command was a sign of higher spiritual ability, said Falla. For those wanting to cleanse themselves before important rituals, especially after they had been fasting for days on end and were in the middle of highly energetic dancing, drinking the hot equivalent of cold brew coffee concentrate could likely get the tummy rumbling. Some accounts describe vast quantities of Black Drink consumed in ritual, which could also be a factor.
Scientists offer another take. “Emetic effects of the Black Drink were more than likely caused by adding things such as snakeroot*,” said Dr. Timothy Pauketat the director of the Illinois State Archaeology Survey and a professor at the University of Illinois. He led research on Black Drink consumption at Cahokia published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences showing that the beverage existed in North America earlier and across a broader geographic range than had previously been recognized.
“If you boil down pure yaupon holly tea so that you get a concentrated caffeine drink, it could have some emetic effects, especially when combined with something like snakeroot,” he added. “Consumed in a milder form, however, it tastes very much like green tea.” The beakers used at Cahokia in Black Drink ceremonies held the equivalent of two or three cups of liquid, he noted.
Ever the experimenter, White has boiled down yaupon tea to make a concentrate, although he said he wasn’t trying to specifically re-create Black Drink. “I don’t think there’s anybody alive in the world who could tell you what’s in Black Drink,” he said. As for the closest attempt he’s made: “There’s lots of caffeine. It’ll give you a buzz.”
*The toxic properties of snakeroot, native to east and central North America, were known to Native Americans. Notably, its Latin name, Ageratina altissima, includes no hint of vomiting, even though thousands of European settlers died from poisonous milk produced by cows that grazed on the plant.