The Calebasse - a crop - Guayusa Traditionally drink tea

Introduction

The calebasse, or calabash in German, is round, curved and hollow. It is also known as bottle gourd and is one of the world's oldest cultivated plants. It thrives primarily in tropical and subtropical areas and is used as a bowl for food or as a drinking vessel.

Table of contents

1. Where does calabash come from – what makes it special?
2. Processing the calabash
3. The calabash for Guayusa tea

1. Where does the calebasse come from – what makes it special?

The oldest seed finds are from South America and Thailand from around 6000 to 12000 BC. Known. Due to its practical shape, the calebasse is used to transport and consume drinks. The fruit grows hanging on the tree and has a spherical body with a long, narrow neck.

The variety of fruits is astonishing, as they range in size from just five centimeters to three meters. The colors also vary from light yellow to deep dark green, from orange to brown.

The bottle-like shape of the calabash is natural and can therefore vary from fruit to fruit.

2. Processing the calabash

The ripe, harvested calabash is best dried intact in a warm place. If you cut the calabash beforehand, the pulp may rot. Drying causes the pulp to become woody and impermeable to water, so that liquid can also be stored in the calabash after it has completely dried.

The drying process of the bottle gourds varies between several weeks and months, depending on their size and ambient temperature. You know that the calabash is completely dry when the seeds inside rattle loudly and clearly when shaken. After drying, the calabash can be processed with a small saw.

3. The calabash for Guayusa tea

This is how completely natural vases, drinking containers and drinking bottles are created. In South America, tea is traditionally drunk from a calabash. The shapes vary from long-necked bottles to round, uniform bowls.

While mate tea is drunk from a bottle-shaped calabash bottle with a bombilla, a type of drinking straw Guayusa tea traditionally drunk from calabash bowls. First will Guayusa Brewed in a large pot, the brew is then skimmed into the bowls and drunk. More about the traditional use of Guayusa through the Kichwa Indians can be found in our article "Traditional use of Guayusa".

To give you the South American flair Guayusa To bring tea home, you can purchase calabash bowls on our website. They come from the same community in Ecuador as ours biological Guayusa tea. Especially for GUYA The bowls were individualized with hand carvings.

Our calabashes are now sold out!