The Chai That's Ground Fresh for You: Meet Eufloria Botanica
There's a 120 square foot room in Lewis County that does more work than most commercial kitchens ten times its size. It's where Jon and Jodi of Eufloria Botanica dry, garble, mill, and pack every batch of tea that ends up in the Herbal and Masala chai you order here at Shona's. No walk-in storage, no stockpile waiting in the wings. If it isn’t made within hours that she orders it, it gets made the night before.
That's not a limitation they're trying to grow out of. It's something they're actually intentional about.
How it started
Eufloria Botanica began in 2017, but their story starts earlier than that. Jon and Jodi were living on acreage full of elderberries, nettles, and horsetail, experimenting with apothecary products and salves long before there was a business behind it. The tea side came from an unlikely place: a railroad contracting job that sent Jon to Maine, right up against the Canadian border, where locals introduced him to the chaga mushroom. He came home with a carry-on full of it.
"We said, we've got to do something with this," Jon remembers. First it was a skincare toner. Then someone pointed out that the locals up north actually drank the stuff as tea, so Jon and Jodi experimented, adding reishi and a mix of chai spices, and came up with their first chai. From there, wellness blends followed. The guiding idea behind their tea is simple: “Please the palate, benefit the body.”
What "small batch" actually means
Ask Jon and Jodi to walk you through a production day and you get a genuinely hands-on picture. Calendula gets harvested only once the morning sun has hit the flowers and dried the dew off. It goes onto a drying rack Jon built himself, then waits two to four weeks before anyone touches it again. From there, everything is hand garbled and stored in jars. Whole spices get sourced as locally as possible, with star anise, cardamom, and ginger coming through a Washington supplier. Then it all runs through a hop mill Jon cranks by hand.
It's slow, and they know it. "A lot of the time, especially getting ready for a festival, we're up packing tea until the wee hours," Jon says. But the tradeoff is a freshness most tea drinkers never get to experience, made in small enough batches that almost nothing sits around waiting to be sold.
Some of what goes into those batches is grown right at home, too. Jon and Jodi tend calendula, several varieties of culinary lavender, rosemary, and young Pacific Northwest-adapted tea plants on their property. Their two daughters, ages seven and nine, help plant, harvest, package, and label, and they’re often at the booth at the Olympia Farmers Market. One of the shop's most popular blends, Fairy Tea, was actually created by the girls.
Why Shona's
Jon and Jodi are choosy about who carries their tea, not out of exclusivity but out of fit. "It's just the feeling you get," Jodi says. "Does it feel right?" For them, that means local businesses that share a wellness-minded, values-driven approach, the kind of shops where support runs both directions.
When Shona wants more chai, she sends a message and Jon and Jodi mill it fresh, meaning the chai in your cup was ground within 24 hours of being ordered. It's part of why the chai in particular tastes the way it does: bold, and interesting.
What's next
Jon and Jodi lean into the seasons to create their blends. Right now, that means elderberries. Come nettle season, tea lovers can expect a new blend built around whatever's ready to be wild-harvested. It's one more small, deliberate choice from a business that seems to make all of its choices that way.
Next time you're in for a cup of Herbal or Masala chai, you're tasting a process that started with a carry-on full of chaga mushroom and a couple willing to do everything by hand in a room just about the size of Shona’s kitchen.
