Our 100% certified organic, hand-picked, wild and local Canadian herbs and blended herbal teas are picked at the optimum time and dried naturally in dark drying rooms.

The Algonquin Tea Company is a collective of dedicated Earth lovers who had a vision of sharing plants from the Algonquin area. In 1996 when we started, we sold over one hundred of the region’s herbs, seeds and three tea blends—which we put into tea bags. Lucid Dream, Homestead Blend, Sweetfern Tonic were instantly recognized in the market place for their beautiful boxes, their ‘wild’ taste and as a ‘new’ type of product. Herbs exclusively from the Algonquin land where we live, were reverently hand-picked and naturally dried.

The first bioregional company in North America, we were a decade ahead of the “Local Food” movement. With the teas’ great success, we were soon too busy to offer all the herbal products and seeds, and focused on the sustainable harvest of herbs for the teas. A couple of years later, we brought out three more varieties: Awakening, Peace, and Sacred Blend.

We made a custom grinder that cut the herbs instead of hammering them to bits. We bought a 5000-pound tea-bagging machine, circa 1940, from the in the Bronx, New York. Kim, Steven and Jack, as well as countless other dedicated Earth lovers (in the form of seasonal workers and enthusiastic sales reps) helped us get through the next five years. Eventually, there came a time where we were too big to do it all ourselves, but we have found other great people and Earth lovers to contract as growers, harvesters and processors.

We are a non-native company, named after the spirit of the Algonquin land where these beautiful plant beings grow. The images that grace our boxes were offered by our friend and artist, Ritchie Stardreamer Sinclair, apprentice to Norval Morriseau, as an honouring of those same plant spirits. The black line that surrounds the images, represents the spirit of the land, that unites us all in her love and blessings.

To date, we’ve sold millions of cups of tea and educated hundreds of apprentices and workshop participants in the ways of living with the Earth. We invite you to join us in our love of the Earth as you relax with a cup of tea, knowing not only that the tea is good for you, but that the Earth gives you Her blessings.

Algonquin Tea Crops and Teas are Organically Certified (Pro-cert)

We have growing and harvesting areas in Whitney, located at the east gate of Algonquin Park on the Madawaska River, where we practice Permaculture Forest gardening, and in Golden Lake on a 200-acre homestead where we are growing certified organic herbs, as well as many other locations. All of our herbs are wildcrafted (handpicked in the wild) in a sustainable manner (picking amounts that a deer would graze). Those herbs which are more rare are grown organically using non-mechanical, ecologically integrated and permacultural methods. No fertilizers, pesticides, fungicides or herbicides are used in or anywhere near where the herbs are grown or picked for the Algonquin Tea Co.

Our Name

We only use plants that are naturally occurring (indigenous) to the Algonquin Bio-region. Like Algonquin Park, we are named after these Algonquin lands, that those of us in the Ottawa Valley call home, which is unceded territory, belonging to the Algonquin/Omàmiwinini peoples. We are not a native owned company.

The Artist

The images that grace our products are by friend and artist Ritchie ‘Stardreamer’ Sinclair. Ritchie apprenticed with Norval Morrisseau, who is considered a master painter and a Canadian treasure.

Blessing

Algonquin Spiritual Elder Grandfather William Commanda enjoyed Sacred Blend tea and would say with a smile “that’s really good tea.” In his generosity, he offered this quote to put into the tea boxes: “We must come together with one heart, one mind, and one determination, and respect mother earth.”

Sharing

Algonquin Tea donates to www.natureconservancy.ca. In honour of our dear friend Skye Faris, social justice and peace activist, we donate to www.ecojustice.ca.