A tea oasis outside Carrboro

We live in a world of mocha-choco-double-espresso-extra-whip grandes that are tossed out drive-thru windows in cups made to nestle next to our gear shifts. We may venture inside the caffeine shops when we need to borrow a cup of Wi-Fi to answer that email from the boss.

So how, in this world, does a tea house draw crowds?

“It’s a sanctuary from the hustle and bustle of modern life in the Triangle and Triad. People breathe out here, and they enjoy the herbal aromas when it’s time to breathe in,” says Tim Toben, managing partner of Honeysuckle Tea House near Chapel Hill.

Honeysuckle Tea House has no drive-thru; it’s not on the way to anywhere you’d be in a hurry to go. It takes a few turns off Highway 54 and a drive through farmland to get to the spot in Orange County outside Carrboro.

The graceful building, built with funds from Slow Money NC and Kickstarter, was assembled from spare and recycled parts. Old shipping containers are the base, and serve as storage and for herb processing. Recycled telephone poles support the pagoda-style roof, and the tables were made from a 98-year-old pine tree that fell down during a storm.

The building, modeled on Japanese tea houses, is open on all sides. That’s why it closes from mid-November to mid-March. Ceiling fans stir the air on hot summer days.

In a coffeehouse, people wall themselves off with the backs of laptops and jockey for the closest positions to electrical outlets. Here, prime seats overlook the outdoor children’s play area so that parents can enjoy sips of adult conversation with their drinks while keeping an eye on the little ones.

The tea house, which opened in April 2014, is surrounded by fields of blueberry bushes, lush plots of herbs and 200 camellia sinensis bushes – the plant that produces the leaves for black, green and white teas. Toben expects that, within two years, the tea house will be able to harvest all the non-herbal tea it needs from those plants.

Toben says 80 percent of the beverages and baked goods served are made from items grown on-site or at the nearby Pickard’s Mountain Eco-Institute, an educational farm and sustainability learning center.

The herbs are organically grown. Honey or organic cane sugar are used as sweeteners where needed, but often the teas taste great without them. Hemp milk goes into smoothies for the kids.

Nonalcoholic herbal shrubs were on the menu for a time in the summer. Shrubs are based on infused vinegars and were originally popular in the Colonial era as medicinal drinks. They’ve made a comeback as mixers at trendy bars.

Yes, there is coffee. But that’s not the thing here.

Teas of all kinds are gaining interest nationwide. According to Forbes magazine, American tea consumption has grown 20 percent since 2000, and among Americans age 30 and younger, is equally as popular as coffee. Sales growth at the green giant of coffee, Starbucks, has been largely attributed to its tea-based drinks, according to Fortune magazine. Starbucks also has opened tea bars in several cities under its subsidiary Teavana.

Of course, those tea drinks resemble Honeysuckle Tea House’s as much as a Filet-O-Fish sandwich is like fresh North Carolina red snapper.

Herbs for healing

Staff herbalist Rachel Zingone believes people are becoming interested in teas for their health benefits. She creates herbal tea blends, along with syrups and tinctures, with an eye toward offering those benefits along with good flavor.

Elderberry syrup, she says, is one of her most popular syrups as an aid for digestion, to boost the immune system and because it tastes great in sodas or lemonades. There’s big demand for elderberry syrup and drinks in cold months, she says. Elderberry flowers find their way into Shelter from the Storm, an herbal tea blend that’s popular in the winter, which is designed to help if you’re under the weather. Also in the blend is linden leaf, thyme, echinacea, rose hips and calendula. All have specific healing or preventive properties, Zingone says.

She works on tinctures – concentrated alcohol or glycerin extracts of herbs – to help with such things as stress and high blood pressure.

She says that tulsi, also called holy basil, is a favorite in tea blends. The herb is paired with cinnamon and other spices in the tea house’s popular tulsi chai. Tulsi is said to aid in such things as helping the body deal with stress, and the subtle flavor goes great with the spices.

Food and drinks

When she gathers a bumper crop of an herb and has some left after making teas and other needs, she takes it to the tea house’s baker, who works it into sweets. A summer profusion of anise hyssop, which has a licorice flavor, found its way into cookies and sodas. Pineapple sage, a red-flowering herb with pineapple-flavored leaves, ended up in a Bundt cake.

Some baked goods come from Ninth Street Bakery in Durham.

“I call us an apothecary cafe, combining herbal remedies and a cafe,” Toben says. “I think you’ll see more tea houses pop up because a trend toward natural remedies has helped that.”

The tea house also makes herbal salt blends for cooking, infused honey and herbal vinegars.

“Syrups are a big thing,” Zingone says. “Elderberry with sugar or honey, and echinacea or ginger. People take them by the teaspoon or flavor things with them. It’s food as medicine.”

Maybe the best medicine of all is getting out of the car and stopping to smell the herbs.

This story was originally published October 6, 2015 at 7:26 AM.