The calabash: a cultivated plant and a traditional way to drink Guayusa tea

Introduction

The calabash (German: Kalebasse) is round, curved and hollow. Also known as a bottle gourd, it is one of the world’s oldest cultivated plants. It grows mainly in tropical and subtropical regions and is used as a container for food or as a drinking vessel.

Contents

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

1. Where does the calabash come from, and what makes it special?

The oldest known seed finds come from South America and Thailand and date to around 6000–12,000 BC. Thanks to its practical shape, the calabash is used to carry liquids and as a drinking vessel. The fruit grows hanging from a tree and has a round body with a long, narrow neck.

The variety of these fruits is remarkable: they range in size from just five centimetres to as much as three metres. Their colours also vary, from pale yellow to deep dark green and from orange to brown.

The calabash’s bottle-like shape is natural, so it can vary from one fruit to another.

2. Processing the calabash

It is best to dry a ripe, harvested calabash intact in a warm place. If you cut into it beforehand, the flesh may rot. As it dries, the flesh becomes woody and watertight, allowing the calabash to hold liquid once it is completely dry.

Depending on the size of the bottle gourds and the surrounding temperature, drying takes several weeks to several months. You can tell the calabash is fully dry when its seeds rattle loudly and clearly inside as you shake it. Once dry, it can be worked with a small saw.

3. The calabash for Guayusa tea

This is how natural vases, drinking vessels and bottles are made. In South America, tea is traditionally drunk from a calabash. The shapes vary from long-necked bottles to round, evenly shaped bowls.

Mate tea is drunk from a bottle-shaped calabash using a bombilla, a kind of drinking straw. By contrast, Guayusa tea is traditionally drunk from calabash bowls. First, Guayusa is brewed in a large pot; the infusion is then ladled into the bowls and drunk. You can find out more about the traditional use of Guayusa by the Kichwa people in our article “Traditional uses of Guayusa”.

To bring a touch of South America into your home when drinking Guayusa tea, you can buy calabash bowls on our website. They come from the same community in Ecuador as our organic Guayusa tea. The bowls were personalised for GUYA with hand-carved designs.

Our calabashes are currently sold out!