Tea Time #230

Ray Marcotte:

So you might have a black tea and say they're from the same variety of tea plant, but if one's grown at a really high elevation and one's grown at a really low elevation, that's going to change the flavor of the tea even though they're processed the same way.

Sarah Richards:

I knew in my heart for myself what was so powerful about tea was how good it tastes and smells and how powerful that is, how it makes you just stop and experience it without experiencing anything else.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

This is Dr. Lisa Belisle and you are listening to Love Maine Radio show number 230 tea time airing for the first time on Sunday, February 14, 2016, tea is one of the most popular beverages in the world. We Mainers love our tea and have many ways in which to enjoy this healthful and nourishing drink. Today we speak with Rae Marcotte and Ellen Canner of Dober Tea and with Sarah Richards of Homegrown Urban Tea about types of tea, how tea is best enjoyed and what specific benefits we may derive from drinking tea. You will love this informative episode. Thank you for joining us.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

in Maine for many years and having been a tea drinker for most of My life. It was really wonderful to experience a place called Dobra Tea when it first opened a few years ago. And today with us, we have the owners of Dobra Tea. This is Ray Marcotte and Ellen Canner. They own Dobra Tea on Exchange street in Portland. Inspired by a visit to a Dober tea room in Burlington, Ray and Ellen wondered how they might open their own in Maine. Having done everything from farming to teaching yoga to software design, travel, photography, and film production, Ray and Ellen were up for yet another adventure and opened a tea room in 2011. They moved to their Exchange street location in 2014. Thanks for bringing Dobra to Portland.

Ellen Kanner:

Hello. Thank you.

Ray Marcotte:

Thank you.

Ellen Kanner:

We're very happy to be here again.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

So the first time that I went to Dobra before it was on Exchange Street, I was really struck by how kind of calm it was, how mellow it was. And there really was this community feel to it that you can get in a coffee shop, but it's just a different. It's a very different vibe to it. Tea has a very different vibe to it. Did that occur to you when you were thinking about opening a tea room versus a coffee shop?

Ellen Kanner:

Definitely, yes. It definitely did. I always had wanted to open a cafe and create that community space. And the pace of coffee is kind of grab and go, and tea, it forces you to slow down and take some time for yourself or a friend. And that was definitely. That was the interest in opening it.

Ray Marcotte:

And it was very intentional, making the space calm. As you walk in. You know, the music is not something that you might be familiar with. You might hear, like, world music, soft furnishings, lots of nice scents from the spices that were brewing for the tea. So it's an intentional space to create calmness.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

There are also a lot of choices, but they're very tangible choices. When you go to a coffee shop, you look behind the person who's serving the coffee, and there's choices on the board. You go to your tea room and there's actually. You can actually pick up and look at and smell. And here are actual tea leaves that will be made into tea. And there's something really different about that. Is that part of the appeal for you?

Ellen Kanner:

Yeah, definitely. Yeah. I would say the interaction with the tea, and that's one of the reasons we. When we happened upon the Dober and Burlington, we're like, wow, look at all these teas. We're so limited in the United States to what we can have access to. And they had a similar display of tea options. And you're just looking through all These little honeycombs and they're like, wow, this is fascinating. And we gotta share this. So that was. So that interactive piece was a big part of it.

Ray Marcotte:

So I don't think the average person realizes that there's hundreds of varieties of tea, you know, so we have that honeycomb display as you walk into the space and you can see what the different tea leaves look like. Not only different classes of tea, but some that are rolled, some are not rolled, some are smoked, and they all look very unique.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

Well, let's back up a little bit. For people who don't know this tea, some of the things we think are tea are really not tea at all. Tea actually comes from a very specific plant, which is a. Well, I'm going to let you talk about that.

Ray Marcotte:

Well, the scientific name is Camellia sinensis, or the genus species variety is Camellia sinensis sinensis, which is the small leaf variety. Sinensis is Latin for China, so the China bush and then Camellia sinensis Assamica. Assamica is Latin for Assam, the region in India. So that's the large leaf variety and there's hundreds of sub varieties within that. So if something is actually tea, it has to come from the tea plant. Whereas if you drink, say like chamomile, that is, we call that tea, but it's really a herbal concoction or a tisane.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

And when I have some limited knowledge of teas, and part of my limited knowledge is there's white teas, there's black teas, there's green teas, there's pu erh teas, there's oolong teas. Does some of this also have to do with the way that teas are actually produced?

Ray Marcotte:

Yes. So there's six distinct classes of tea. The one that you left out is yellow, and they all come from the same plant. So what makes them different is the way the teas are processed. Some are heated, some are rolled, some are withered, some are steamed. It all depends on how the tea is, what they do with the tea leaf once they pick it, and that's what makes it become the actual tea.

Ellen Kanner:

And then you also have factors that come into play even greater than that, which are where the tea is grown. So terroir, something that's very common in wine. Tea is more like wine than coffee, I always say, because you have the environment, the sunlight, the soil, you have the location on the planet, all this can factor into the way a tea leaf, how it comes out with flavor and then how it's processing.

Ray Marcotte:

So you might have a black Tea and say they're from the same variety of tea plant. But if one's grown at a really high elevation and one's grown at a really low elevation, that's going to change the flavor of the tea, even though they're processed the same way.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

So what would be the difference in processing, for example, between a green tea, a black tea, and a white tea?

Ray Marcotte:

So with green tea, the. The main thing that keeps it green is the heating element, because the tea leaf is filled with enzymes. And if you don't. If you don't heat the enzymes, they're gonna. That's the way to keep them green. And then if you have an absence of heat, then the tea leaves will turn black. So it's all about oxidation, and oxidation is affected by heat as the very first step in tea production.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

And what would a white tea be?

Ray Marcotte:

So white tea is the least processed class of tea. They essentially just let the leaves wither and then they dry them, usually in the sun. So it's really very little processing involved in white tea.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

And white tea tends to have less caffeine than a green tea and a lot less caffeine than a black tea. Does this also have to do with the processing?

Ray Marcotte:

Well, there's a lot of myths actually out there about tea, the level of caffeine in teas. You know, you read on a box like this tea has, you know, 20 milligrams. This tea has 70 milligrams. It really comes down to the reason a certain tea might have less caffeine than another is because we use hotter water with black tea and we steep it for a longer amount of time, so it's going to extract more of the caffeine from the tea. It's not that the tea itself has more caffeine, so it's really about steeping and water temperature mostly. Except if a tea is just from buds or tips, then it does, in fact, have more caffeine because the tip of the tea plant has a higher concentration of caffeine.

Ellen Kanner:

And a greener tea that's freshly picked will really have a lot more caffeine, even though there's a perception that it might not. But it does have. And when they're really fresh, it's quite a jolt.

Ray Marcotte:

So a green tea can actually be more enlivening than a black tea? Most definitely. Especially if it's freshly picked in the spring.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

And this is. It's interesting because what you're talking about is basically opening up an entire enormous world versus can I have a cup of tea? And Somebody hands you a Lipton bag and those teas are fairly highly processed and it's essentially kind of tea leaf dust.

Ray Marcotte:

Yeah, they call it dust in the tea trade. It's basically the byproduct of whole leaf tea production. So once they're done, it's the stuff they sweep off the floor and put it into tea bags. They call it fannings or dust.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

That's very disturbing.

Ray Marcotte:

Yeah. I mean most of the world's tea is actually dust or bagged tea. It's like 96% whole leaf tea production is very small.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

Your tea room, Dobra tea. Even though we think about tea from China, tea from India, we think about drinking tea in Great Britain, Dobra actually did not come from any of those places.

Ellen Kanner:

It came from. Our business partners are Czech, so they're based in Prague. The Czech culture does not have. Did not have a tea culture. So this is something that they brought in after the Velvet Revolution. You couldn't drink tea, good quality tea in the Czech Republic when it was

Ray Marcotte:

Czechoslovakia and it was communist.

Ellen Kanner:

So the. There's a lot of. They explored all these teas and they ended up really bringing in tea rooms. Like there's 30 in Eastern Europe now. So the culture was something that was developed in the last 20 years, but it's not inherent in Czech culture.

Ray Marcotte:

And dobra is a Czech word that means good. So good tea.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

There is something about tea. I mean, we've described the actual tea itself and its properties. We've described the community aspect of a tea room. There is something that's very mindful about that. You have to be very mindful in creating a cup of tea because you've already described if you're going to do a black tea, you have to steep it so many minutes. If you're going to do a white tea, you don't steep it quite as long. But there's something in the creating of that tea and also of the drinking of it where we all have to slow down.

Ray Marcotte:

Yep, slowing down. And a lot of people don't realize that whole leaf tea you can actually re steep. And if you're not re steeping it, you're actually not tasting the entire tea. Because you want to re steep that tea three or four times depending on the tea. It changes over time. Like if it's, say it's a roll tea, it takes a little while for those leaves to open up and release the oils.

Sarah Richards:

Yeah.

Ellen Kanner:

Most black tea is steeped once, but we have several. One from Korea and another one called Jinjin, which is from Yunnan. Province of China. And that one is re steeple. That's my favorite, also known as golden buds. And so those are two. Black teas are restivable. Most black teas, most aromatized herbals are not reestubable. But the greens, white, yellow, oolong and puer are.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

Why do you think that we have become so interested in tea compared in the United States, compared to where we were, I don't know, say, 15 years ago?

Ellen Kanner:

Well, it's actually really interesting. I read this factoid about millennials and they're the first generation to drink more tea than coffee. So I think it's just there's something in our culture where folks just want to slow down and not be so fast paced and with so many different devices out there that can call you at any minute and ask you to do something. T just forces you to be quiet and take time.

Ray Marcotte:

I think it's something that can bring you back to sort of an old world culture because we're sort of at this 21st century breathing down your neck. Everything is at your fingertips all the time. So it's a way to just, as Ellen said, slow down and, you know, take in the moment.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

In looking at your backgrounds, you've done so many things. You, you've been in academia. That was part of your background. You've also done farming and yoga, software design, travel photography, film production. So you have a broad variety of interests. And what you're describing about tea is that there's kind of something for everyone there. There's a historical aspect to tea, there's a health aspect to tea, there's a production aspect to tea. Cultural, cultural community. There's so many things about tea that might appeal to you.

Ellen Kanner:

Yeah.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

What was the defining moment for you when you said, you know what, whatever we're doing right now, we're just going to put that aside.

Ellen Kanner:

While we were living in Hanover, New Hampshire, I was working at Dartmouth. He was working at a small college in Western Mass. And so we were kind of living this life of him driving down and back for two years. And we found ourselves in Burlington at this tea room. And we're like, wow, this is chill and this is great. And we had been looking for something just different and moving back to Maine. I had been wanting to move back to Portland for a number of years because I had moved away in 2000 and I was working@maintoday.com in the press Herald. So I helped to start up a couple websites there. And we were just. I really wanted to move back and I wanted, you Know, we kept coming back and we kept traveling here and it was one of those things where everything. We went into the Dobra in Burlington and everything was like, wow, this is it. And everything fell into place. We were there in a blizzard in 2009, February, we made contact with the owner and by May we were in Prague meeting with our new business part. And then 2010, we moved to Portland. And 2011, early 2011, we opened on April 1st. So it was, it just all fell into place and that's. That was it. We knew.

Ray Marcotte:

So we were just ready for change. We just want, you know, we knew it was a big risk, but we just took it and everything's been great ever since.

Ellen Kanner:

And we still do some of those things, you know, we still do. I still do web development, so it's still part of our lives. It's just that the Tea Room is. Was the magnum opus, I guess.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

The last time I was in your Exchange street store, it was packed. I mean, it was wall to wall people. And maybe it was because it was around Thanksgiving. I don't really know exactly what the day was, but people really just enjoyed being there. And I don't know that I was surprised because I've always liked your store and I've always enjoyed going there. But the fact that it could attract from off of Exchange street where you could pretty much, you could go get popcorn or you could go to a bookstore or you could go to one of a few different coffee places. They chose the Tea Room. Did that surprise you that people would be so drawn?

Ellen Kanner:

I don't know. I figure we were really drawn to it initially, so we're like drawn to something.

Ray Marcotte:

Myself, I'm pretty sensitive to a space, so I walk into a business space and often I find them to be really hard and cold. Sort of wanted to make something different, make it softer, you know. I have a background in meditation, yoga, so sort of bringing in that element. And so, I mean, I think everyone needs to calm down in some sense. So just coming into that space, we hope you feel that energetically so you'll be drawn to come back. And the interesting thing is that it brings people from, you know, really young children with their mothers, teenagers love to hang out there because, you know, there's no alcohol. Older people, elderly people. It sort of is a great space for, you know, for all ages.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

Do you find that different types of people are drawn to different types of tea? Or can you ever think to yourself, that person looks like she might like a green tea? You can never do that.

Ellen Kanner:

I don't think so. No. You know, no. I mean, there's some people who come in as or a chai every time and try this.

Ray Marcotte:

No, but that's part of our job, I think, is to re. Educate the public because, I mean, everyone knows about chai, but not everyone knows about Ti Guanyin, this oolong. So, you know, something that's this amazing oolong that has all these floral accents and tastes incredible. So I think it's our job to sort of broaden people's horizon with tea.

Ellen Kanner:

And that's what that honeycomb display on our countertop, I feel like that is really. That helps in that area.

Ray Marcotte:

And we give classes.

Ellen Kanner:

We do classes where they can do nine tastings. So it's. And we do first Friday tea tastings as well, so that we put a tea out for that or a couple teas. So it's something where we have the opportunity for people to taste teas or explore deeper in a workshop.

Ray Marcotte:

Yeah, just. I think that education piece is key because there, I mean, tea has this sort of mystery around it. You know, everyone knows Lipton and, you know, iced tea, but there's a whole other world to explore.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

What have been your most popular teas?

Ray Marcotte:

I would say when we first opened, definitely things that people can pronounce, such as vanilla. But now, you know, we have a lot of regulars that we've, again, we've educated and they've explored, and we have a little tea tasting sheet that you can kind of check off as you go through the teas, comment when you had it, what it tasted like. So you can kind of go through the list. But definitely in the beginning, I would say more of the, you know, vanilla Earl Grey things we've all heard of. But now it's really diverse. It's sort of all over the place, especially in this new space, which I think is much more visible to more people. We have a big connection now with the Press Hotel, and that's really helped.

Ellen Kanner:

Yeah, they're serving our teas in the Press Hotel. So.

Ray Marcotte:

Yeah.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

What are some of your. What are some of your favorites? What are some of the ones that you as individuals really like?

Ellen Kanner:

Well, I like the Yunnan Golden Buds, but also the oolongs are very interesting. They have the greatest degree of oxidation, so they can be more. Tend to be more green and floral all the way to a more tobacco flavor, like what you might find a Wu Long in a Chinese restaurant. So they have quite a range within that. And so that's, I would say, is my favorite. I like Greens as well. Especially in the spring.

Ray Marcotte:

Yeah, I don't really have a favorite. I mean I base it on you know, the time of day, the season, you know in the morning I might have maybe a black tea but sometimes I'll have green tea. It kind of depends on how I'm feeling. I really like matcha which is becoming really popular these days. It's fine powdered tea where you're drinking the whole leaf. So it's really good for you. Lots of antioxidants, vitamin C.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

Yeah. Matcha is very interesting because it actually requires a little whisk. You can't put it in a tea ball or in a tea sleeve. You actually have to. There's a little bit more production.

Ray Marcotte:

Yeah, there's a, there's a. It's called a chasen or a tea whisk. So it's a bamboo whisk. I mean you can use like an egg beater type thing but it doesn't work nearly as well.

Ellen Kanner:

Yeah, when we were in Japan people

Ray Marcotte:

tried to do that.

Ellen Kanner:

We were in Japan, we actually went to see someone who was making these chaoson and the work that goes into them it was pretty crazy. And they had big ones, they had ones that were like you know, two feet tall just as an example and they had the smallest ones, it was pretty wild.

Ray Marcotte:

But they're all made out of one piece of bamboo. So really fine cuts. Really, really labor intensive to make.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

Has the fact that green tea and actually now pu erh and black have received some acclaim as having health benefits. Has that helped your business in any way?

Ellen Kanner:

Definitely.

Ray Marcotte:

Oh definitely, yeah. People come in and ask us, you know what might this tea be good for? What might that tea be good for? I think the most studies that have been done are on green tea. You know the fact that all, all tea from the tea plant has caffeine but it also has theanine which is that mind calming amino acid. So you get, you know, you get that lift from caffeine but you also get calm down at the same time which you don't get in other caffeinated beverages. But yeah and anything from the tea plant has lots of antioxidants, vitamins, minerals, really good for you.

Ellen Kanner:

And white tea. I know there was some, maybe Dr. Oz or somebody was talking about white tea and I know this a peak in white tea requests or Puerto Puer

Ray Marcotte:

was really big because puer is known for helping with digestion and so yeah we had this real spike when that sort of was on in the media.

Ellen Kanner:

Yeah, we recommend puer when people come in on a Saturday morning after a hard night, we recommend a puer that's

Ray Marcotte:

good for digestion and fat burning and such. Yeah. Cholesterol. There's been lots of studies with puer.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

And there's an interesting thing that has happened with tea in that it used to be, especially if you're going to have a thing of Lipton, you put in your two packets of Splenda. I never did this, but two packets of Splenda and your cream. But what you're describing is if you. It's gonna be hard. If you're gonna drown the tea itself with lots of stuff, it's gonna be hard to actually taste it.

Ellen Kanner:

Yeah. We don't suggest any additives to white, yellow, green, pu erh or oolong. It's straight up. So black tea, you know, I know people, we know people have that tradition from the English in putting, or actually tradition from the British in putting milk and sugar. But the reason they did put milk and sugar is because they didn't have the quality whole leaf tea. So they had the fannings and so that.

Ray Marcotte:

So they're trying to cover up that bitterness. But if you have a good full bodied black tea, you know, you don't necessarily need milk. Not that you shouldn't drink it with milk. It's just I think something. We have it, this happens all the time. People will order a black tea and they want that milk and sugar and they end up not even using it after drinking the tea. So that's happened a number of times.

Ellen Kanner:

Yeah, many times.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

And I think about myself with the black teas, especially the tannins and the sort of the astringent nature of the tea. That's often why I'll put a little honey in there. I have to admit I'm not always a purist, but then when I go back and drink a white tea straight up, it's really amazing. It's amazing how some of them can be very floral and some of them can be very green.

Ray Marcotte:

Very different.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

It's like having a different type of wine or a different type of coffee. It is that terroir that you're describing,

Ellen Kanner:

the white tea by Mudan, which is also known as white peony. That one to me in a cup turns a brown color and it has more of a nutty flavor, which is not at all like its white counterparts, yinzen, which is a silver needle. So within the white tea class you have two very different.

Ray Marcotte:

Yeah, and the silver needles is, as I mentioned, it's the tip only Those buds only so that in theory would have a higher amount of caffeine because it's just from the tip of the plant, even though it's white tea.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

Now, what about the tea ceremony? This is something that we think we've heard about from Eastern cultures. Is this something that you've observed or been part of yourselves?

Ellen Kanner:

Yeah, yeah. There's Japanese tea ceremony, a gung fu tea ceremony. We actually have a workshop coming up. One of our employees, Tristan, is actually quite into kung fu tea and he has done one in the past and he's going to be doing another one. And the gung fu tea is more about a whole lot of tea and brewing that in quick steeping so that you get a more robust flavor. But there is the traditional ceremony, like the Japanese tea ceremony with the napkin folding and the movement. And we experienced that in Japan and we've actually had folks. There's a lady here locally, Hiroko, who has come and done it in our old space, but I think it's too hard for her to now.

Ray Marcotte:

Yeah, she's getting older. She said it affects her knees because there's a lot of kneeling. So can't seem to get her back to do the ceremony. But she's been in a couple of times. And we actually had a woman from Wayne Fleet do the kung fu Chinese ceremony, but I think she's moved away.

Ellen Kanner:

And you can order the gung fu tea tasting at our tea room. I know, yeah. So we have that. You can order the gung fu, you

Ray Marcotte:

can pick any oolong and have one of our employees perform the ceremony for you.

Ellen Kanner:

So, yeah, it's a combination of washing bowls, little washing cups and the tasting cup and the sniffing cup and then in hot water. And then there's this. There's a whole process to it and

Ray Marcotte:

it's using tongs and you're basically sharing tea with somebody. And gong fu means use a lot of tea to a little bit of water. So you're really getting the essence of what the tea tastes like. That's the real purpose of it. You're just sharing tea with someone.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

Well, that's actually one of my favorite things about having gone to Dobra is usually when I'm at Dobra, I'm there with one of my daughters and my son actually goes there too. He's a little. He's 22, so he doesn't. He's more with his girlfriend. But when I go with my daughters, even the 14 year old who's been going with me now to tea rooms for Many, many years. She'll say, I would like a silver needle tea, or I would like a white peony or I'd like a jasmine pearl. And she used to, when she was very young, she would just ask for chamomile. And it's interesting to, in her mind, she's just sort of incorporated this knowledge and incorporated these tastes, which are so subtle compared to a lot of what we eat and drink in this world today.

Ray Marcotte:

Right? Yeah.

Ellen Kanner:

Yeah.

Ray Marcotte:

I don't know, there must be something sort of. I mean, if she's 14, then, you know, she's digital native, grown up with things at her fingertips. Everything's right there, look it up, really. So maybe she wants to just kind of slow down, you know, and sort of experience something innately really different.

Ellen Kanner:

Yeah, I know that actually, for children and younger folks, we always suggest herbals if they don't want caffeine. So the chamomile lavender, tulsi, peppermint rooibos is very common. And if they like spice and are adventurous, then we offer the masala rooibos or something. So they all start without. Not many youngsters like caffeine or look for caffeine. Their parents don't want them to have caffeine.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

Yes. I think when we first started, I was more than happy to have her have just chamomile. She didn't need to be any more activated than that. Well, I'm excited to go back now. Having. Every time I talk about tea, it makes me excited to go back and find out more about a new tea that I can try. I know the people who are listening will want to go to Dober Tea. How do they find you?

Ray Marcotte:

So we're located at 89 Exchange street, which is upper Exchange Street.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

And what about a Website, Dober Tea

Ellen Kanner:

www.o V-R-A t e a m e.com

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

well, I appreciate what you've done, bringing your tea room to Portland and having experienced it several times and hoping that I will experience it many more times in the future. It's good stuff. It's good what you're doing and I'm glad that you were in Burlington that night and made the decision that somehow this was going to be your life change. So.

Sarah Richards:

Yep.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

So this is good. Thank you. Tea impacts us all in really positive ways. We've been speaking with Ray Marcotte and Ellen Canner, who are the owners of Dober Tea on Exchange street in Portland. Thank you for coming in.

Ellen Kanner:

Thank you.

Ray Marcotte:

Thank you for having us.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

it's my great pleasure to speak with a longtime member of the Portland community and entrepreneur and healer. This is Sarah Richards of Homegrown Herb and Tea. In her tea shop on Munjoy Hill, which she has owned since 2006, she concocts her own blends, often referencing Ayurvedic medicine and Western herbalism. What you're doing is fascinating stuff. It's been interesting to me as a I believe I first read about you probably when you opened your shop in 2006. And at the time I was earlier on in my experience as a doctor, and it was kind of the first I had heard about Ayurvedic medicine. You were one of the first people in this area to start talking about Ayurveda. Tell me about that.

Sarah Richards:

Well, you know, I think like so many things, it was probably prevalent but hadn't yet come to the forefront of alternative medicine and modalities in our community. But when I started learning about Ayurveda, it was for me this really pivotal time in my herbalism. I had been making tea for a long time from a really Western perspective, and after all those years of doing it that way, from sort of a the way Western medicine always approaches things. It's isolate the active compound and concentrate it and consume as much of it as you possibly can. There were these big missing pieces and I felt them really intuitively in what I was doing, in how I was helping people, just in making tea for friends and family. I could feel sometimes that a blend I made two people for a cold, for example, would be really effective and well received by one of those people and not have the same effect on the other. And just over time I started to feel like, oh, I don't think this person needs that. But I don't know why. I just felt it. And when I started learning about Ayurveda, it was initially for my own healing. I was teaching school and was having skin problems and asked a co worker who had beautiful skin what she used. And she lent me this book about it. And it was just absolutely, just eye opening to me in every way and just made so much immediate sense and logic that I immediately took it in. It was kind of. I always compare it to learning how to play guitar or learning to speak Spanish or speak a foreign language. It's like you learn initially the notes and the chords, and then you get to play a song and actually express yourself. And Ayurveda really feels like that to me. In my tea making, it's. I have, I have. You know, when I discovered it and started learning about it, I had all those basic building blocks of knowledge about plants and their medicinal value. And then I got to discover their energy and how to apply the active compounds in a way that can be received in a healing way by the recipient. So it's just endlessly fascinating to me. I never feel I've mastered it. I always feel like I'm getting to a different layer of it and I see it in the world around me, everywhere. It's just the most beautiful, cohesive element in my world to me. So I'm really grateful for that moment. When she gave me that book, it was absolutely life changing. And it came at a time when I was super disappointed about my career. And so it was just this beautiful sort of serendipitous thing.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

You grew up in New Charon, so you're a Maine girl.

Sarah Richards:

Yeah.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

My experience as also a Maine girl is that herbalism isn't necessarily a career path that people are encouraged to go on. How did you find. I know you were a Spanish teacher also. How did you find yourself interested in herbs?

Sarah Richards:

I have always, since I was a little kid, loved to cook and loved to concoct things. I had a friend growing up and we would make all these crazy drinks all the time and then record ourselves making commercials for them. We'd give them names. And then I became a waitress and a bartender and worked in food service from the time I was 15 until my early 30s. And the joy of that work was always for me giving somebody something delicious that I had had a part in making. Like, whether it was just simply how I buttered the toast and it, you know, it thrilled the customer. Like, I just. That has always given Me, Joy, that piece of it. So, you know, I remember when, you know, my first, like, two or three years teaching, and I finally decided, okay, I'm not gonna bartend anymore. I'm not gonna. I had a little diner job on the weekends, and I decided, you know, I'm so over this. I'm just going to focus on my school teaching. I remember saying to myself, I'm so done with that. I'm so burnt out. I'm never going to do it again. And, you know, here I am. And what I do is so much a reflection of all the good parts of that work for me. But, you know, in terms of herbalism specifically, I started making tea when I went to college, and someone gifted me an herbal encyclopedia. And I would have an ailment, and just I was fascinated with, you know, looking up what herbs might be helpful to my ailment. And then I would get other herbs to mix with it because alone, they generally tasted terrible. And then I would look up the herbs of those aromatic. Look up the medicinal value of those aromatic pieces. And so I started blending flavor with intention. And, you know, that was always one of the things about Ayurveda that appealed to me the most, was I knew in my heart, for myself what was so powerful about tea was how good it tastes and smells and how powerful that is, how it makes you just stop and experience it without experiencing anything else necessarily. I knew that that was powerfully healing. And I knew there was something about tea. Even though it wasn't the synthetic concentration or a homeopathic remedy or this or that, I knew that it was really special and a really important vehicle for how to help people. So, you know, I guess that's. I think your question was, how did it all start?

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

Yeah. Beginning interest in herbs.

Sarah Richards:

Yep. And that's really where it came from. I've always loved the things in the garden that we used, you know, to cook with. And, you know, just the simple mint and chamomile and those things that just grow readily and freely that, you know, you can make tea with. So those have always been there. And just sort of talking to me.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

Well, it's an interesting thing that you've just brought up, chamomile and mint. So chamomile is a flower. It grows out there everywhere, and it's been used for, actually for children and adults, but a lot for children. And it has a very calming effect. And it's something that's available to all of us, really, during the growing season or if we dry it afterwards. Mint is Used a lot for digestion. And these are things that we don't have to take a pill for.

Sarah Richards:

That's right.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

We don't have to take an acid blocker for our stomach. We can actually go out there and find something living that can help us.

Sarah Richards:

And I think that's very universal in, in our psyche, in our culture. It's very universal to understand those simple things and what they're simply good for. It's amazing how we sort of simultaneously acknowledge and then ignore that basic wisdom, that relationship that we have with plants, as opposed to choosing a simple cup of calming herb to go to sleep. People so often choose a medication which sends you down this road of who knows what and you know, but that, that same person will often know that wisdom simultaneously. Like, oh, I could just have a cup of calming tea and I could just, you know, shut my laptop off at 8:30, 9:00 at night. And you know what I mean? It's all, I love that about my job. I think one of the questions I sort of answer referencing that. I think one of the best things about my job is when I just through a conversation with somebody, get them to realize their own tools, like get them to realize the very obvious basic things that they're not doing to be healthy. It's pretty, it's pretty remarkable. People feel so indebted to me, but really all they're doing is listening to their own story.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

You know, you raise a really interesting point and I think that some of it is really cultural. If you are in China and you understand the five element or five phase theory, you know that there are patent medicines or there are herbs that you can just use, you don't go to the doctor for them, they're just out there. Or similar to Ayurvedic. If you're in India or one of the surrounding countries, you know, maybe I'm more of a kapha or a vata or a pitta, and maybe I'm going to combine these spices in my cooking or these herbs in my teas. But it's really. There is a lot more knowledge of what can help us as individuals before we even get to the place of seeking medical care on a more emergent or urgent basis.

Sarah Richards:

Yeah, I think we as a culture have really sort of put our hands up in the air and not accepted to not do our part. Like if we looked at our system of medicine as, you know, the reaction to the final stages of illness as opposed to. And I think it's really unfortunate and I think that it's changing a little bit and shifting a little bit, certainly. But in general it's, you know, an experience with the average physician is not going to give you this great in depth conversation and reflection on what has brought you to this point of illness. And it's not going to look at the basic things, nutrition and emotional experience, relationships, what your job is like. Like all of those things are things that we tend to just ignore when we go about getting healthy in our culture. And it's very unfortunate, but I do think it's changing a little bit, shifting a little bit. You know, the whole alternative healing entity in our culture is, I would say, you know, what, tenfold what it was 10 or 15 years ago, like, it's really pretty prominent. So that's a good sign.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

Well, what I enjoy is when I sit down with patients and because I practice Chinese medicine, I will talk about five phases with them and I'll talk about what it looks like to have more of a wood element in yourself or more of a fire element. And people are thirsty for that knowledge. And coming from a Western doctor, they're almost shocked that I'd be willing to talk about that. And the same is true with Ayurvedic medicine that you actually have to understand that. And I'll let you talk about vata, pitta and kapha, because I know that you make blends that are specific to those types. But to know that you are more of one type of a person than another type of a person. So certain herbs are going to impact you in a very different way than they might impact your child or your father. But that's a new way of thinking. That's not the logarithmic approach to medicine that we've had for a long time, which is if you have this disease, you take this medicine and this is what happens to your body.

Sarah Richards:

Right, Right.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

So can you talk to me about the Ayurvedic approach to these different types?

Sarah Richards:

Well, Ayurveda is really about reflecting on what your body is expressing. And so it comes from that very basic act of what do I look like, what do I feel like? What is my body doing in terms of illness? In Western medicine, we sort of look at an illness as this problem to be solved. Whereas in Ayurvedic medicine, as in Chinese medicine, and they're very parallel, like if somebody gets advice from somebody practicing Chinese medicine, it 100% of the time is the same advice you'd get from an Ayurvedic perspective. So they come from that same basic perspective. And Science of balancing the basic energy that is, in certain ratios, a good thing for the individual or a bad thing or a place of imbalance for the individual. So, you know, you want to, you want to look at what your skin looks like and you want to think about what your emotions are expressing, and you want to look at those symptoms, you know, not just I'm coughing, but am I coughing wetly or dryly, or is my congestion in my head is. You know, all of those things are what we would think about if we were truly reflecting on ourselves in that moment of, you know, need for balance.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

Can you give me an example of a person, just a few sentences about someone who has more of a vata dosha versus versus more of a pitta or a kapha?

Sarah Richards:

Sure. Well, the doshas are the types they call them. And human beings are a little different than plants and animals, where within a species of plant or animal there tends to be a type. In human beings, we all have these very individual constitutions. They're generally combinations of the three types which represent really simply vada is air and space, Pitta is metabolical fire and transformative energy, which includes an aspect of water that has to do with flow. And then kapha is earth, oil, water, mass, density. So anything that's alive has in its constitution those three things. It has air and space. It has the ability to metabolize and create. It has a presence, a physical presence, a density, water, mass. It's there. And so in people, because we have these very individual constitutions, we tend to be a certain type. If someone's a vata type, they tend to be slender, prominent, boned, narrow, slightly irregular features, dry skin. You know, there are many, many attributes to assess. Kinky hair, nervousness, sleeplessness, dry skin issues, constipation, ailments are all reflective of what energy is high at that time. So you can be any kind of type, any dosha, and still have a different imbalance going on. But those attributes of each dosha, although they sound negative, it's simply a way to use those expressions as a tool to wellness. So if you compared somebody vata type, skinny, cold, dry and light to somebody pitta type, metabolical fire and transformative energy has the attributes of warm and moist. So pittas tend to be affected through very fiery expressions, things like rashes and hives and allergies and digestive issues like IBS as opposed to gas, which would be a more airy issue. And, you know, they tend to be more medium build and less dry skin, but can be prone to dry Skin when imbalanced and the features tend to be medium soft and pink as opposed to long and irregular and narrow. And I mean again, it gets so detailed. It's like the color and kind of shapes of your teeth, the kind of hair and skin tone you have, all of those things are potentially attributes of a dosha. And then the kapha type, the earth dosha, tends to be full bodied, oily skin type, prone to things like lung congestion and depression and weight gain. And they're all connected to different seats of the body, different organ systems. So in long term imbalance, certain diseases will be more prevalent than others. And it's a way a practitioner would approach healing that person. So for example, if somebody was suffering, for example from. It's a good one. Well, constipation, just a basic ailment I guess would be the best way to approach it. They would immediately ask questions related to vada. So like people think it's so amazing when they come in and they've got something going on. And I'm able to say, oh, have you been eating? You know, too many nuts and seeds and raw vegetables, that's all I eat. You know, they think, it's like they think they're going to contradict the point that I'm making. And they're always surprised that those are the things that. And how did I know? And that kind of thing. But it's. You can literally see it expressed in people. You see it in their body, you see it in their skin, you see it in their energy, their mood when they come in. It's very, very obvious. And I think it's such a beautiful thing about Ayurveda that it is so simple really. It's very complex ultimately, but really basically the most simple way to heal someone because it's really based on those very pragmatic expressions that are just kind of. They tend to be crying out to the person and when you listen, it's powerful. The littlest things can be so powerful. So.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

And different times of year are associated with different types. I know that when I go to sunnies for lunch, you provide teas for sunnies. And sometimes I owe them an order, I won't tell them. And sometimes you can actually, you can order teaspoon. That have to do with time of year?

Sarah Richards:

Yep, I give them a seasonal tonic. Yep.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

So what time of year? If we're talking in the autumn now, going into the winter. So what type of tea would you offer as a tonic?

Sarah Richards:

Well, I'm pretty purist about. I do four blends that aren't on my regular menu that I put on the board that I only run during those seasons. And one is always the seasonal tonic, which were blends that I created my first couple of years open. And they're just. They're pretty complex, most of them. And they're just. They've always just been right on. Like, people love them, they feel really good. They're just the right herbs for that season. So I don't change those. But the other three I change every year because I just want to come from a new space in a new place when I create them. And. But they are all balancing for that time of year. I'm pretty purist about when I change the blends. Like, I do it on the solstice and the equinox. So it feels a little incongruent, I think, to. To the seasonal shoppers right now that I still get the fall tonic on the board and stuff, but I'll just sort of slowly this week and next week kind of introduce a simple winter tonic and then come up with my winter blends. But this time of year, you know, the. It's very true. The energies that are dominant in the different seasons are very strongly dominant in our climate. Fall is very vada, so there's always a ton of change. It becomes cold and dry, sort of unpredictable. It's sort of a chaotic time. So we need what is really naturally right around us that time of year to emphasize warm and moist foods. Things like root vegetables, cooked root vegetables, and things that ground us and add more moisture and more oil to our constitution. The warming spices are always really good in the fall, and we love them in the fall. We love clove and ginger and cinnamon and cardamom and nutmeg and all those things this time of year. And it sort of leads into winter months, which are dominated by kapha, by the earth dosha. So they tend to be cold, cold, they tend to be damp sometimes. A lot of those same warming spices are really helpful in the winter months for uplifting the earth energy, which, you know, I think we all really feel. We all get a little bit.

Ellen Kanner:

It's.

Sarah Richards:

It's. I always joke that it's great for business because people are sick and depressed in the. In the winter, so they come in in hordes. But it's very true. Like, we're all sort of prone to being a little more depressed and a little more lethargic and more inclined to go inward. And it's not that it's not a good time to do that. And a Good time to relax and restore. But it's also the trick, I think, to keep the spirit up in that time of year. And then you've got spring, which is high pitta, a lot of allergies. Everything just warm and moist and getting funky. And so you want to be cooling and you want to promote the flow. The flow gets really blocked and creates all the. All that sort of hot and moist reaction physically by the body. It creates a lot of stress. So pitt is really high at that time of year. And so you want to be cooling and flow promoting a little more diuretic in your herb choices. If you're thinking tea, more greens, which it's. It's so cool, I think, to look at diet ayurvedically because it just very naturally goes along with what is growing right now anyway. So, you know, beautifully. That's when all those things like kale and arugula and Swiss chard and spinach and beet greens, those all pop up in the spring and they should be emphasized. Emphasized, therefore.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

Well, Sarah, you've just opened up an entire Pandora's box of interesting things that people who are listening to are going to want to find out more about. I know they're gonna want to go to your store, probably get a tonic for the winter months or the fall. Where can people find you?

Sarah Richards:

I AM located at 195 Congress street in Portland, Maine, and it's right at the bottom of Munjoy Hill, very near Washington Avenue. You start going up the hill, I'm on the left. They're doing this horrible construction to the facade of my building right now, which is just not timely at all for my Christmas rush. But I am open, so I hope that my sign can still be seen and people dare to come in. There's this scaffolding over the entrance right now, so it's not ideal, but I'm there.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

So you're there. And people can also find you online. What is your website?

Sarah Richards:

Homegrownherbandtea.com well, I really appreciate your coming

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

in and sharing your knowledge and also bringing your teas to Portland and making the healing energy of these herbs available to the people who come visit you. You've been speaking with Sarah Richards, who is the owner of Homegrown Herb and Tea. Thank you so much for all the work you do.

Sarah Richards:

Thank you, Lisa.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

You have been listening to Love Maine radio Show number number two, 30 tea time. Our guests have included Ramar Cott, Ellen Kanner, and Sarah Richards. Follow me on Twitter as DrLisa and see my running travel, food and wellness photos as bountiful1 on one Instagram. We love to hear from you, so please let us know what you think of Love Maine Radio. We welcome your suggestions for future shows. Also let our sponsors know that you have heard about them here. We are privileged that they enable us to bring Love Maine Radio to you each week. This is Dr. Lisa Belisle wishing you a Happy Valentine's Day and a happy birthday 15 years to my youngest daughter Sophie. I hope, I hope that you have enjoyed our Tea Time show. Thank you for allowing me to be a part of your day. May you have a bountiful life.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

Sam.

Ellen Kanner:

She said baby I'm sleeping.

Sarah Richards:

With secrets I've been keeping.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

Won't you play with with me 1, 2, 3.

Sarah Richards:

Will you sleep with me 1, 2, 3.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

Please remember me one two, three

Ellen Kanner:

It.