Victoria Cosford
Natasha used to love coffee, drinking easily two cups a day. Since discovering guayusa, however, she’s been able to give it up effortlessly – and that was five years ago.
Ayusa Tea is the name of the business she and husband Daniel launched as a consequence of a trip they made some eight years ago. Both ’digital nomads’, they’d headed to the town of Cuenca with their two young children. ‘Everyone said we were loco’, Natasha tells me. ‘We wanted to get out of the western world and show our kids a different life.’ What they found was a town high up in the Andes, Spanish colonial architecture, glorious mountain backdrops – although not long after arriving, stomach cramps (‘like Bali Belly!’) sent the family to a local naturopath who gave them guayusa tea to drink. The calming effect was striking – and immediate. And so Natasha started researching.
Guayusa, an Amazonian plant, is gathered by local farmers who dry out the leaves to create a tea supercharged with anti-oxidants, amino acids, natural caffeine, and gut health benefits; it focuses the mind and is an anti-inflammatory. Fast-forward to today and a farmers’ market stall which lures you in with a vision of pretty pastel cardboard cylinders containing tea bags, beautiful glass tea pots, infusers, handy sample packs and glass bowls of loose leaves. Natasha herself, bursting with vitality and enthusiasm, is a perfect advertisement for this wonder tea, while Daniel is the genius behind the bottles of sparkling guayusa. An organic energy drink, it’s a delectable cross between a fizzy iced tea and a ginger ale.
As delectable indeed as are the teas: the pure, the cinnamon myrtle and the anise myrtle. Natasha and Daniel have a regular supplier in Ecuador who sends out big sacks of the leaves they then package in their Ocean Shores home. It’s a small but perfectly polished family affair.
Ayusa Tea is at New Brighton Farmers Market every Tuesday from 8am to 11am and at Mullumbimby Farmers Market every Friday from 7am to 11am.
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