Hawaiʻi-Grown Tea

Tea in Hawaiʻi is a post-contact crop. The tea plant, Camellia sinensis, arrived with the plantation-era settlers from China and Japan, whose households carried the habit of the kettle and the pot with them. The older Hawaiian drinking tradition of leaf infusions rests on māmaki, Pipturus albidus, a native forest tree of the nettle family whose leaves were steeped long before any imported tea reached the islands. Both strands now meet in the small growers of the high, wet, volcanic ground, who make tea from the island-grown bush and from māmaki side by side.

Two different leaves are meant by the name. The first is Camellia sinensis, grown on volcanic slopes at elevation and plucked as the young shoot, the bud and two leaves, then withered, bruised and dried to make green, oolong or black tea according to how far oxidation is taken. The second is māmaki, Pipturus albidus, whose broad leaves are picked, dried and cut or broken, then steeped in hot water as an infusion with no true tea in it at all. Māmaki is written here as a Hawaiian drinking tradition and nothing more. The dried leaf brews to a pale amber or reddish-brown liquor, and it is served hot or chilled.

Hawaiʻi-grown tea is drunk plain, without milk, alongside the dishes of the local table: manapua and dim sum, rice crackers, musubi, and the sweet pastries of the bakery counter. The reason is structural. A clean, lightly astringent infusion cuts through fat and salt and leaves the mouth ready for the next bite, and the same logic that governs the Cantonese pot governs the islands' plate lunch cup. Māmaki, which is softer and rounder in the cup, takes a little honey or is served chilled in warm weather.