Community News Service
Story by Grace Evans Taylor, an intern with The Bridge through the University of Vermont’s Community News Service.
In central Vermont, community flourishes with something as simple as a cup of tea.Â
Refreshing beverages sold at the Barre Farmers Market, herbaceous sips shared between friends at a Barre coworking table, or brewed slowly for eager learners in a Plainfield tea hut — the tea-drinking ritual stretches back centuries and continues to bring people together in this small corner of Vermont.
Growing Tea in Underused Spaces
Amber Collett Terway founded Tilia Tea in 2024, with the mission to grow not only tea but also community. Using plants grown in underutilized Barre plots, the company crafts familiar teas such as chai and chamomile along with custom concoctions. The “Revive Blend,” for instance, combines rosehips, hibiscus, orange peel, lemongrass, and peppermint to “energize your senses,” the online listing says.
Terway’s passion for gardening started at a young age. Growing up in Iowa, Terway learned from her grandparents’ experiences as farmers and the work they did to sustain their family and community.
“When I became older, I brought with me those values of community and connection in a way that we can foster and grow relationships over food or over tea,” Terway said.
Later, Terway experimented with growing different herbs while also studying holistic health and community regreening. Community regreening works to restore damaged landscapes and urban spaces, often prioritizing local engagement and sustainable practices to blend climate and community health.
All of these interests intersected in the midst of the pandemic while she and her family were seeking connection. Her extroverted daughter insisted on inviting people over for tea parties, reminding Terway of the power that food and drinks can have in creating community.
With challenges around land access for new farmers in the U.S., Terway wondered what it would be like to take neglected plots of land in Barre and turn them into vibrant spaces to grow herbs and teas.
“We’re thinking about what does it mean to grow something from seed and end up in your cup,” Terway said. “Those are the moments of deep connection and possibility.”
Originally, Terway grew all of the herbs in her Barre backyard, but after the first year of business she knew it was time to expand. Tilia Tea’s first landowner partnership began after a friend offered Terway a portion of her unused land that was overgrown with weeds and invasive species. So Terway reached out to the people who lived nearby.
“I would tell them about our process and what we do. Come in and remove invasive species, rehabilitate the soil, grow these teas and herbs instead of weeds. And they would get really excited,” Terway said.
Recently, Terway ran into issues with neighbors when planting on an unused plot near Hilltop Avenue, as reported by VTDigger.
From those conversations more partnerships came along. Since then, Terway has expanded to sell at the Barre Farmers Market, along with neighboring farmers markets. The company donates all of the tips it receives to Vermont nonprofits, raising more than $1,000 last year.
Tilia Tea also does wholesale and sells to local businesses such as the Barre Social Club, which shares Terway’s goal of building community.
A Natural Fit
The Barre Social Club was founded by Nick and Cat Allen, who settled in the city after living in 10 states over the span of 11 years. Hoping to connect with locals and find a setting to do remote work, the couple decided to create their own social club.
“It felt like just sort of a natural fit to also offer tea for our members,” Nick Allen said.
The club sells Tilia Tea in its retail shop, along with other hyper-local items. The Allens also provide complimentary tea to club members, including a custom blend.
“We knew that (Terway is) the expert and would provide us something that was unique and high quality,” Nick Allen said.
Terway makes her custom blends by asking customers what they hope to achieve with the tea. For the Allens, it was important to cultivate a calm, focused, and social environment, Terway recalled.
“I took that qualitative information, and I was just like calming chamomile, uplifting peppermint, and that grounding feeling you get with raspberry,” she said.
While Terway designs her blends with the herbs’ natural benefits in mind, her biggest priority is making sure the teas taste good. As someone who was not always a tea person, she understands that many people only reach for tea when they’re sick, not for the flavor.
“I try to make them exciting for folks who do know and love tea and maybe want to geek out about it, but taste really good for folks who just want to try tea and maybe are newer to it,” she said.
For the Barre Social Club, Tilia Tea is used for much more than just sipping. The club hosts events such as birthday parties and brunches, incorporating the herbs in many of the dishes they serve, such as a French toast dish with a whipped topping flavored with various Tilia Teas.
In a place that prioritizes connection, tea aids in bridging gaps.
“I’ve seen where people are working together share a pot,” Nick Allen said. “We have some groups who come in for brunch and will brew some and can share it at their table.”
Understanding Teas
In Plainfield, tea builds community through education. Ben Youngbaer opened the Setting Sun Tea Hut in 2015, a Japanese style space that serves as both a classroom and tasting room where guests learn about tea culture and history.
Tea has always been a part of Youngbaer’s life. As a child, he traveled with his grandparents to Perennial Pleasures, a plant nursery in East Hardwick that offers tea tastings. The visit was the first time he intentionally sat down for tea instead of just sipping it while doing something else.
“That was a big eye-opening experience for me,” Youngbaer said.
As an undergraduate student in Burlington, Youngbaer frequented a teahouse and later worked there. He got hands-on training with tea and studied tea-making by reading blogs.
When Youngbaer visited China and Japan, he realized that the tea process was a lot less complicated than it appeared in writing. Tea vessels were also a big part of Youngbaer’s discovery during his travels.
“Being able to see the workshop and just understand this deep history of ceramics was really cool,” he said.
For Youngbaer, teaching others is a way to solidify his own knowledge. He offers ever-changing classes on tea. Some may be specific to one region and others may be wider ranging, but all are group classes.
“I think it’s easier for a lot of people to go into something as a shared experience,” he said. “Sometimes it’s just better to have more people to bounce ideas around, clarify some questions, and then just more perspective — people coming from different backgrounds.”
Youngbaer also hosts tea retreats that lean even further into the communal nature of tea. Participants at an event held in May will prepare Japanese teas such as matcha and sencha and learn to cook traditional cuisine. Another retreat was scheduled for mid-July.
“I want people to experience things that they can’t experience anywhere else unless they go to China or Japan or Taiwan or India,” Youngbaer said.
“I just want to share something I love,” he later added. “If people experience it the way I do, they can take whatever they want from it and apply it to their own lives.”
A Tea Cafe
Editor’s note: To round out this look at Central Vermont’s tea scene, Bridge Staff Reporter Tracy Brannstrom added this section on North Branch Café, a longtime tea business in Montpelier.
North Branch Café has 125 loose-leaf teas from about a dozen countries in South and Southeast Asia, with a focus on Camellia sinensis, the plant used to make traditional white, green, yellow, oolong, black and pu-erh teas. Its menu also includes herbal blends such as Tilia Tea’s Quiet Mind, specialty iced teas, tea lattes, mocktails, wine, some coffee options, and health conscious food.
Owner Lauren Parker opened the café in 2012. She grew up drinking and appreciating tea, making iced sweet tea for her family starting at age 10, which they drank with dinner every night. North Branch is part of what its website calls a “multi-service approach” – the wine bar run by Parker’s sister, Becky, and a technology services and consulting business run by her husband, Wes. Parker also teaches tea classes and rents a private room, called The Library, for tastings and other events.
Parker said the café has adapted its offerings over the years to meet customer demand. During the pandemic, it added coffee for the first time, mainly cold brew, after other local cafés began closing in the early afternoon. More recently, the growing appetite for matcha has helped make matcha lattes one of the café’s most popular items. Parker said social media has helped drive that demand, while the Japanese matcha the café uses, sourced through a vendor in Washington, has become harder to get. “Our current focus is to really fit into the current café market in Montpelier. We’re looking for ways of reaching out to new people,” Parker recently told The Bridge.
North Branch manager Sharon Allen said she has recently been drinking the café’s golden pu-erh the most. The fermented tea from Yunnan, China, is often pressed into cakes or bricks. Allen first tried pu-erh with honey, but now prefers it with a pinch of salt, which brings out its slightly bitter, “very robust” flavor.
Parker’s own tea routine changes throughout the day: black tea in the morning, followed by a green or oolong in the afternoon. As for a favorite? “It’s impossible to choose just one,” she said.
