“Where Do You Get Your Herbs?”
This is a question we hear a lot in the shop! And our answer is usually some form of, “a lot of places”.
We’re not trying to be vague - we really do get our herbs from a lot of places, and it’s always changing a little, so there is no direct answer!
I have been working with herbs for over 25 years, and all of this experience helps me evaluate the quality of herbs. Since the beginning of Alchemy & Herbs, I knew I wanted to source quality over anything else, and I knew that would also mean sourcing smaller quantities so the herbs wouldn’t hang around much longer than a season.
Our entire herb wall has been intentionally curated. I started by making a list of all of my “favorite” herbs (that was a lot!). I made a bigger list by researching a whole bunch of herbal learning programs and adding herbs most commonly taught, then added in some cooking herbs, spices, and tea teas (Camellia sinensis). And then I narrowed it all down to what could fit on our shelves.
The resulting list is around 100 herbs, spices, and teas (not including our blends), and it does change a bit - we assess how much of each herb we go through in a 12 month period along with how frequently other herbs are requested, and we usually make menu changes 2-3 times each year.
We source with a great deal of intention! Lots of work, time, care, money, and all of those years of experience I mentioned go into choosing the source for each and every herb/spice/tea that we carry. It’s not “one and done” when we stock our shelves, the source for each herb is chosen individually.
A large amount of our herbs come to us directly from organic herb farms, mainly in Vermont, New York, and Oregon. We love to source directly from growers! With the rare exception, anything we can source direct from farms, we do source direct from farms.
Anything we can’t get directly from a farm comes from a short list of trusted distributors who source from organic farms internationally. These are mostly spices and Camellias, but also some flowers and herbs.
We compare herbs from different farms and/or distributors and choose the ones we think are the best. All of our sources are great! We especially love the herb farms we work with. But even between farms, and even though I’d recommend any of them to anyone, we still have our favorites!
Sometimes it’s just the way the plant is processed that helps us choose. For example, we might love the astragalus root from two different farms, but we like the way one is cut better. Sometimes the choice is very subtle, like the turmeric from two different distributors are both amazing, but one is just slightly more vibrant. Sometimes the choice is so overt there is no choice! Chamomile is a great example of this - if we run out of chamomile from a farm, we’d rather not carry it at all than carry a subpar chamomile from a distributor.
We put in all of this effort because we love herbs and want to offer the best for you and for our tea blends (and also we get a little burst of joy when you notice the quality!), but we also do it to make it easy for you to get all the herbs you need in one place without having to do all the shopping around and experimenting yourself.
We hope you love what we've chosen for you!
Xo,
Lisa