Cascara - Coffee Cherry Tea

In the cup: raisin, grape, cranberry, tart dried cherry, red wine, fruity tea

Here's coffee's best-kept secret: every single bean you've ever sipped started life nestled inside a bright red cherry.

And for decades, those gorgeous fruits were simply tossed aside like yesterday's news - millions of pounds of potential flavor composted into oblivion while we chased the seeds inside.

But ancient coffee cultures in Yemen and Ethiopia knew better. They've been brewing these discarded cherry skins for over 500 years, creating a drink called qishr that tastes like liquid sunshine. While the coffee world was obsessing over roasting profiles and extraction ratios, entire generations were quietly sipping this ruby-colored elixir that captures everything magical about where coffee grows.

This cascara represents a beautiful rebellion against waste. Instead of letting these fruit treasures rot in compost piles, forward-thinking farmers are carefully washing, steaming, and dehydrating them into these amber gems. The result? A naturally sweet, wine-like tea that carries half the caffeine of coffee but twice the antioxidants of cranberries.

Those raisin and grape notes you're tasting? That's pure terroir speaking - the same soil, altitude, and climate that would eventually shape the coffee beans are singing their song through the fruit. It's like getting a sneak peek behind coffee's curtain, tasting the botanical poetry that surrounds every harvest. One sip and you realize we've been throwing away liquid gold.