What Happens When a Flavor Falls Out of Fashion? The Search for Teaberry

“An Exhilarating Tipple” read the 1892 headline in the New York Sun. It topped an article about “teaberry”—an adult beverage that involved the infusion of applejack brandy with leaves and berries of the wild teaberry plant. “The odor of the combination is both apple blossoms and mountain teaberries, an odor which is so fascinating that the amount of the alcohol in the drink is forgotten.”

Applejack may be familiar. Teaberry perhaps less so.

Turns out, I was raised with the taste of teaberry—Clark’s Teaberry Chewing Gum, to be precise. It was my grandmother’s favorite; hence it was mine, and it was always a good day when she drove to the newsstand to restock her supply. Made by Clark Brothers Chewing Gum Company in Pittsburgh starting in 1886, teaberry gum had the bright, minty taste of a wintergreen Lifesaver with a sort of rubbery back bounce to it.

Teaberry disappeared from my life when my grandmother did. I rediscovered it decades later when I bought a cabin in the woods of eastern Maine. I began gathering random leaves and needles and bark to smell and taste, because, well, apparently that’s what you do when you move to the woods and have little better to do. The aroma of cedar needles and sweet fern and the inner bark of yellow birch were intriguing. Then, one day, I gathered up some small, waxy leaves growing just inches off the forest floor. I crushed them, cupped my hands, and breathed in.

Did local folks ever make anything with teaberry back in the day, I asked? He looked at me for a long while … then said, slowly, “Yes, they made tea out of it,” as if I were the dimmest person he’d ever had the misfortune to meet.

Whereupon I was 9 years old again. Smelling my cupped hands in the forest was all fine and well. But surely there was something else I could do with these. So I asked around, including one woodland creature named Bob Upham, an ancient local who always wore camo and always looked slightly aggrieved. Did local folks ever make anything with teaberry back in the day, I asked? He looked at me for a long while through glasses as thick as jelly jars then said, slowly, “Yes, they made tea out of it,” as if I were the dimmest person he’d ever had the misfortune to meet.

I tried making tea, and didn’t think much of it. The teaberry flavor was thin and distant, it seemed more cooked and grassy than fresh. So, I tried making an oleo saccharum—taking leaves and muddling them with sugar, then sealing them in a jar for a day. And this worked spectacularly. The sugar coaxed the oil out of the leaves. The aroma was as heavy and pleasing as a freshly opened pack of gum. By adding water and lightly heating it, then straining out the leaves, I could produce a rich teaberry syrup that captured all the bright goodness.

From this I made teaberry soda. A lot of it. And I still drink much of it every summer. A bit of syrup with club soda yields instant refreshment. I’ve tried mixing cocktails with the syrup, although without great success. That wintergreen note always seems to sit over on the side by itself, hoarding its flavor and refusing to play with others.

One year, the dour but brilliant New Orleans bartender Chris Hannah visited. And I tasked him to come up with a cocktail using teaberry. He tried this and that, and I kept insisting that it wasn’t as delicious as teaberry soda. Whereupon he made me a glass of teaberry soda, added a shot of vodka, and handed it to me. The “shut up now” was silent. Sifting through the archives of drink, I haven’t found much use for teaberry in cocktails—other than that applejack-infused variant. And frankly, when I tried that, the teaberry didn’t add all that much to the applejack, which is perfectly delicious on its own. (Indeed, infusing teaberry in any high-proof alcohol fell short, resulting in something that tasted less fresh, more like mulch.)

The internet is rife with commentary on flavors that were once popular but have since vanished. It’s a sort of clickbait nostalgia—flavors like Wild Cherry Jell-O and Toasted Almond Good Humor Bars and those strangely tangy-chalky purple Necco Wafers. Yet these aren’t lost flavors—simply discontinued products no longer produced in the factory.

Truly lost flavors are far more fascinating.

Truly lost flavors are far more fascinating. These are flavors that were discovered in the wild, civilized for a time, and then, for one reason or another, exiled to the fading memories of the elderly. While some of these flavors have persisted—we all still recognize juniper, thanks to gin—others that were once everywhere are now nowhere. Such as spruce, another northern forest flavor. Spruce beer and spruce gum, keystone products of the 19th century, are now relegated to niche brewers and adventurous distillers.

Clark’s Teaberry gum still exists, at least in name. First Source LLC, a candy and snack packager based out of Buffalo, currently manufactures it in Mexico. I bought a pack online. It tastes of only the most distant echo of the past—not one my childhood would recognize. Fortunately, the woods of Maine are still lovely, dark, and deep. And the flavor is still out there for the picking.