We are sure you'll know that guayusa has become popular in the U.S.A. as a clean, naturally caffeinated energy drink.

Beyond brewing as a hot tea, extracts of the leaves are used to make other products, such as ready to drink flavoured cold teas, in cans and bottles.

We only have to look at the latest flavours from Runa to see the traction this amazing leaf is getting in the commercial world.

You'll also be aware that, before the relatively recent popularisation of guayusa as a delicious, energising beverage, guayusa has long been revered by people of the Amazon, such as the Kichwa.

This article from Vice tells us that, for the Kichwa people, it has functions beyond a natural source of caffeine. These include it being a stomach tonic, diuretic, providing relief for body aches and believing it to increase fertility.

The Kichwa also use it in the interpretation of dreams, gathering together before the dawn breaks, sharing the stories of their dreams before starting their daily activities.

Back in December, we had a message from one of our customers who was very excited to tell us about an event he was planning - a traditional guayusa tea ceremony. He asked if we'd be able to help out with the promotion of the event.

Hey all just throwing up this little animation we made of ten reasons we love guayusa tea. These aren't the only reasons, but they're good ones :)

Discover more detail on our original blog

Ten reasons we love #guayusa tea! Discover more on our blog at guayusateashop.co/10reasons

A post shared by Guayusa Tea Shop (@guayusateashop) on May 18, 2017 at 1:02pm PDT

Hi everyone, we hope everything is good with you and thank you as always for your support and custom.

We wanted to let you know about a few changes to our shipping prices and policies.

We've been trading for just over a year and a half now, and we've always been making a bit of a loss on the postage costs.

We've tried to keep these fixed for as long as possible, but with lots of other things going up in price, we regrettably can't sustain it. For example, it costs us about £3.50 to post one packet of tea including the packaging, but we've only been charging £2.50. 

From March the 5th 2017, we will need to change the postage prices to more closely match the prices we are charged by the Post Office - and for the cost of the jiffy bags, boxes and stickers etc.

Read on to learn more.

We gave up coffee as our daily source of caffeine in favour of Guayusa (a caffeinated holly that grows in the Amazon rainforest) about 3 years ago. Since we first fell in love with it a lot has happened.

We adored it so much that we wanted to tell more people about it, and we worked hard around our busy day jobs to find out how to start a tea business! There’s no time here to list everything that was involved, but it’s now about a year and a half since we started trading, and we have so many more plans!

We have learned so much. One thing we've learned is that if you feel a passion about something so much that you can’t stop thinking, or talking, about it - and you want to build a living around it - you can. You might have to put in some extra hours - and be able to sustain it (for what feels like quite a while) - but if that love doesn’t go away, you won’t give up!

You probably have gotten the sense that we are really passionate about Guayusa? So, it wouldn't hurt us to back up why - here’s ten 10 reasons why we love this tea so much. We could list more - but, ten is a nice neat number. It’s also the exact amount of letters in ‘G.U.A.Y.U.S.A.T.E.A’ :)

As a UK-based business selling Ilex guayusa - an Amazon rainforest holly that makes a delicious tea - it got us wondering why the European holly, Ilex aquifolium, is also revered in Christmas symbolism here.

If you'd have asked us “What plants or trees have mythological status in the UK?”, we’d have probably named the holly along with other things like oak and mistletoe.

On the other side of the world, among the Amazonian Kichwa people, the guayusa holly is also revered - and is in fact the singly most referred to plant in their culture. This is due to its use in day-to-day life as an energy-giving beverage and how it also functions in medicine, ritual and festivities.

Here in the UK, we have the ritual of hanging wreaths of holly at Christmas. In the Amazon, the Kichwa have their own holly rituals, such as events themed around guayusa during times of festival.

As we investigated the subject, we learned much about the mystique that surrounds the beautiful European holly tree and tried to spot similarities in the magic shrouding the Amazonian guayusa holly tree.

The appearance of holly on things like Christmas cards came about with the Victorians, but its mythical status dates much further back - to pagan and Roman times. 

Please allow us to take you on a journey that we hope you'll find 'w-holly' awesome :)