How tea became a lifestyle for a local business owner
Visit the home of Nadia X Black MajesTEA—also known as the Tea Foraging Artisan—and you’ll find more than 300 live plants and twice as many herbs. An experienced, certified herbalist, she lovingly calls her personal space The Apothecary. In her social media videos, you can see plants hanging on the walls, in jars, and in pots.
She says she has more plants in her home than seats—”You better pop a squat beside this aloe vera!”
She is a regular vendor at the Cooper-Young Community Farmers Market. Her neat market table is full of tea blends with cool names like Hot Ginger Biscuits, Goji Berry God Energy, and Kenyan Chai. Each tea has a story and purpose as interesting as its name and creator.
It’s rare not to see a small crowd gather around Nadia’s table while she pours samples and educates people on the benefits of each brew. Education is a big part of her business.
Hot Ginger Biscuits tea—with hibiscus, ginger, locally foraged elderberry, and schisandra berries—warmed me from the inside out. Nadia says this particular combination helps with blood pressure and cholesterol.
The first tea she ever sold was the Goji Berry God Energy with goji berries, elderberries, peach leaves, mango, guava leaf, seasonal fruits, red raspberry leaves, and blue lotus. She used this tea to replace her coffee habit and says that it helped with some of her skin conditions.
Another staple in Nadia’s inventory is the Black Mint Sage, made with her own crossbreed of mint, black mint, sage, thyme, oregano, yarrow, eucalyptus, and black tea. She says it can assist with all things upper respiratory and overall lung health. The Kenyan Chai—inspired by time she spent in Kenya—has ginger, cinnamon, turmeric, fenugreek, cardamom, purple cayenne peppers, black pepper, star anise, and black tea. Nadia describes it as spicy and strong and says it helps with inflammation, pain relief, and mucus buildup.
Sharing the benefits of each tea is important to Nadia. Healing herself and helping people understand how they can use natural ingredients to help themselves is part of what led her to Black MajesTEA.
How it started
Nadia’s journey to becoming an herbalist started with curiosity and watching her mom.
“It was normal for me to see my mom with her feet up, relaxing with a cup of tea,” Nadia says. “It made me curious about what was in the actual tea bag.”
As a college student at the University of Memphis, she double majored in psychology and sociology and worked in the TIGUrS (Tigers Initiative for Gardens in Urban Settings) Garden. (This award-winning space was founded in 2009 and is still kept up by students and volunteers.)
It was there that she learned about growing her own food. This led to a deeper dive into the study of herbalism. She started experimenting and researching, becoming self-taught in making teas, and understanding more about their medicinal value.
She also began foraging for herbs and local plants to learn what was safe to consume.
Foraging, Nadia says, is good for the plants and the environment. When practiced correctly, it can help people save money and build relationships with the land around them.
“Foraging is not about what you can take. It’s about how you’re going to learn from the plants,” she says.
“It’s How can I partner with this plant? How can it help me while I help it? It’s important to not approach foraging from a purely consumerism standpoint. All plants can teach you something. It’s a beautiful relationship.”
As her interest and knowledge grew, she became certified in low-dose botanicals, using safe dosages of plants to make tinctures. (A tincture is a plant extract usually dissolved in alcohol or vinegar.)
“Every element of my life is ‘herbified,’ and as I’ve grown, I’ve changed my perspective of what being an herbalist means. It’s a lifestyle,” she says.
Sharing is caring
As a college student, Nadia would go live on social media to show her followers what she learned, how she was using her various herbs, and how she was making tea. She started receiving requests for recipes and offers to buy her products. So Nadia launched Black MajesTEA out of her dorm room in 2020 when she was just 21 years old.
Since then, her business has grown into tea, herbs, classes, and trips to help people understand the resources around them.
Nadia says teaching is one of her favorite things to do.
“It genuinely makes my heart happy,” she says. “It’s fun and gives me a sense of purpose. I’m not just here to sell tea. I want to leave a legacy of education behind and equip the next generation of foragers and herbalists.”
When she’s not offering tips about herbs and teas on her social media channels, Nadia hosts foraging classes and trips. These usually include plant-based cooking demonstrations of healthy, gluten-free, whole foods. Depending on the experience, her students may also learn how to build fires and identify plants, where to forage, and the ethics of foraging.
The locations where Nadia forages vary. Sometimes, she gets permission and partners with landowners, and other times she visits public lands. For curry ramen, she foraged burdock and dandelion roots in Memphis. To forage blackberry leaves, she visited a mountain trail. And in Connecticut, she taught her Instagram followers to properly cut mullein so that it grows back well.
She also has plans to partner with local museums and gardens. Classes to look out for include Foraging for Tea, Stop Killing Your Weeds, Pain Relief, Herbal Kimchi Making, and more.
Nadia knows that Memphis has some of the worst health stats in the country, with a high number of dialysis centers and food deserts, and she wants to be part of changing that. “My goal is to feed people in my classes both intellectually and physically so they can go home knowing about the benefits of foraging and healthy eating,” she says.
Erica Horton is a freelance journalist who loves to learn and write about almost anything. @chewsipfly
Buck Billings is a Memphis-based photographer and aspiring DJ. He captures Southern life through candid moments, celebrating its people and traditions, new and old. He enjoys good wine, live music, and hole-in-the-wall eats—and he’s always on the lookout for his next favorite spot. @buck.billings