Yaupon Tea as a Southern Cash Crop?

So in thinking about alternate cash crops for the South... if Europeans didn't misunderstand the Native American Black Drink, is it possible for Yaupon Tea, cultivated from the Yaupon Holly, to become a cash crop / major export of the South? It is related to Yerba Mate of South America, which has developed a large following in South America and abroad.
 
It seems that part of the problem is that it was later to market compared to Asian teas and the little research I did leads me to suspect that farming it wasn't any cheaper than actual tea.

First, tea has fairly high yields while the few photos of a modern yaupon farm I found look positively sparse. Second, the article I found said yaupon pickers make $20 a day which suggests that it's a hard job that doesn't return many leaves per hour, and based on the farm photos I'd agree. In the perpetually labor starved colonies I think it would be a high labor, low yield crop especially when something with higher margins like tobacco, indigo, or rice could be grown instead. It's a great product if you're a local who can gather the local wild leaves for free but plantations of the stuff would be expensive and compared to tea, under-producing.

Yaupon seems unlikely to gain much traction as it probably had higher labor costs, lower margins, and was going up against an established product. Basically yaupon's only advantage would be lower shipping costs from N. America to Europe as opposed to Asia to Europe. Barring a sudden yaupon craze in London I can't see it ever being more than a niche product.
 
It is technically true that I. vomitoria doesn't induce vomiting, and that its effects are actually similar to coffee, but unlike tobacco and coffee itself (both of which were often used in small, relaxing, mind-clearing quantities) its ritual function was crucially associated with vomiting. Early Modern Europeans don't have much use for purging - you already get plenty of that psychological hit at a Calvinist church - and it's hard to see them innovating a use for it before tobacco and cotton turn out their profit margins.
 
Yaupon_Holly_392.jpg


From what I can see, Yaupon Trees produce a fair amount of leaves. Also they're just as fast growing as traditional tea trees.

Also, the plants themselves can be arranged similarly to traditional tea plants.

15-gal--dwarf-yaupon-holly-.jpg

Yaupon

green-tea-farm-adirek-kata.jpg

Tea

They likely require about the same amount of labor to produce.
 
Also, looking at English tea culture on wikipedia...

"The first record of tea in English came from a letter written by Richard Wickham, who ran an East India Company office in Japan, writing to a merchant in Macao requesting "the best sort of chaw" in 1615. Peter Mundy, a traveller and merchant who came across tea in Fujian in 1637, wrote, "chaa — only water with a kind of herb boyled in it ".[43][44] Tea was sold in a coffee house in London in 1657, Samuel Pepys tasted tea in 1660, and Catherine of Braganza took the tea-drinking habit to the British court when she married Charles II in 1662. Tea, however, was not widely consumed in Britain until the 18th century, and remained expensive until the latter part of that period. British drinkers preferred to add sugar and milk to black tea, and black tea overtook green tea in popularity in the 1720s.[45] Tea smuggling during the 18th century led to the general public being able to afford and consume tea. The British government removed the tax on tea, thereby eliminating the smuggling trade by 1785.[46] In Britain and Ireland, tea was initially consumed as a luxury item on special occasions, such as religious festivals, wakes, and domestic work gatherings. The price of tea in Europe fell steadily during the 19th century, especially after Indian tea began to arrive in large quantities; by the late 19th century tea had become an everyday beverage for all levels of society.[47] The popularity of tea also informed a number of historical events – the Tea Act of 1773 provoked the Boston Tea Party that escalated into the American Revolution, and the need to address the issue of British trade deficit caused by the demand for Chinese tea led to a trade in opium that resulted in the Opium Wars.[48]"

It looks like there is plenty of opportunity for Yaupon to be introduced to England before Catherine of Braganza makes Chinese tea fashionable, assuming her marriage isn't butterflied away... or she adapts to already present Yaupon Tea.
 
The best chance would be the anti-tea hysteria after the Boston Tea Party which is credited with making coffee more popular in the US. Follow that up with the American Revolution which temporarily continued that trend. There's some time right there for yaupon to become the drink of choice amongst patriotic Americans, which would logically increase demand (especially in New England) and encourage Southern plantation owners to start growing it. These plantation owners will naturally select the best plants, and the caffeine content and yield will increase in much the same way that yerba mate yield increased in the 19th/20th century, in addition to plant becoming easier to grow in a plantation setting.

From there, yaupon could spread the same way other American traditions have. Think baseball. Meiji Japan might drink a lot of yaupon as a symbol of modernity (and spreading yaupon to Korea and Taiwan in the process). Some Latin American countries (probably not the Southern Cone) might replace coffee with yaupon for one reason or another. The Philippines and other acquisitions of the American empire also seem like logical choices. Perhaps Africa and the Middle East too. Maybe freed slaves bring the tradition of yaupon cultivation to Liberia and Sierra Leone, and the drink spreads from there. European immigrants to the US bringing the drink back to Europe, perhaps. All sorts of possibilities.
 
From what I've heard, the biggest problem is that it doesn't really taste that good. At least from what I heard, it's like black tea but very, very "eeehhhhhhh."

You could probably get Hibiscus "tea" to become more popular in the SE USA, though.
 
From what I've heard, the biggest problem is that it doesn't really taste that good. At least from what I heard, it's like black tea but very, very "eeehhhhhhh."

It's definitely better than black tea IMO, and clearly there's a market for it since all sorts of people have been drinking it for centuries.
 
From what I've heard, the biggest problem is that it doesn't really taste that good. At least from what I heard, it's like black tea but very, very "eeehhhhhhh."

It's not the worst. It's better than some tea I've had the misfortune to taste.

We could go an alternate colonization route, with Europe encountering the cold northeast and the far fringes of the Mississippian trade-web. So the generic assemblage of missionaries, fur-trappers, and whalers encounter black drink, and eventually they start consuming it as less ritual purging, but more as wake-up and work juice, with woodsmen, sailors, and other travellers spreading the drink far and wide.

Much like beef tallow, bison, and beaver pelts, yaupon enters the world economy as a cash crop to fuel the gears of international commerce.
 
I've always wondered why it took until the last 20 years for American farmers to consider cultivating tea.

As tea crazy is Europe as you think that would be a rather obvious cash crop
 
Ok question, in The other hand. Why Is yerba mate so popular in The southern cone, and in The world to tell The true.
what in his history that is diferent to The yaupon tea history? Maybe Is The fact that yerba mate was never used as vomitive, Is The only diference?

Principal yerba mate comsumption
yerba-mapaexportacion.jpg
 
Currently drinking some Yaupon Tea I ordered.

It’s less bitter than normal black tea. Probably due to the lack of tannins. Not as grassy as Yerba mate.
 
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