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Baja California Sur's wild-harvested damiana infusion, steeped with canela and miel de mezquite. The herbal tea the Guaycura were drinking centuries before anyone bottled it into a liqueur.
This is from Baja California Sur. Not the Yucatan, not central Mexico, the long dry peninsula where the Sierra de la Laguna pours down toward the Sea of Cortez and damiana grows wild along the rocky slopes. Turnera diffosa. A small yellow-flowered shrub that smells faintly of resin when you brush against it. The Guaycura, the indigenous people who lived on the peninsula long before the Jesuits arrived, were already drinking it.
Damiana is not a flavor. It is a plant. The bottled liqueur you find in tourist shops is a 19th-century invention, and there is a serious argument among bartenders in La Paz and Todos Santos that the original margarita was built on damiana liqueur, not Cointreau, before the recipe got rewritten for the American market. That is a debate for another conversation. The tea is older than the liqueur and it is what people in Baja Sur actually drink at home.
The brew is straightforward and unforgiving. Good damiana, water just under a boil, eight minutes of steep, miel de mezquite from the desert mesquite trees that grow on the same hillsides as the damiana. That is the whole recipe. The miel matters. Mezquite honey has a smoky, woody depth that wildflower honey cannot replicate, and it is what makes this tea taste like the place it comes from. If you cannot find mezquite honey, use a good raw wildflower honey and accept the compromise. Saber cocinar es saber vivir, and in Baja Sur, saber vivir includes knowing what grows on your own hillside.
Damiana (Turnera diffosa) is a small flowering shrub native to the Baja California peninsula and the broader Sonoran Desert, and its use as a medicinal and ceremonial infusion is documented among the Guaycura and Pericu peoples in Jesuit missionary records from the 17th and 18th centuries, where it was described as a tonic for fatigue and a remedy for stomach ailments. The commercial Damiana liqueur, produced in Guadalajara since the late 19th century and sold in the distinctive Indian-goddess-shaped bottle, codified damiana's association with Baja Sur in the national imagination, though the plant itself was the everyday tea of peninsular rancheros long before any bottle existed. Local bartenders in La Paz and Todos Santos still argue that the proto-margarita served at Hussong's Cantina and other Baja establishments in the 1930s and 1940s used damiana liqueur rather than triple sec, a claim that has gained credibility among Mexican cocktail historians but remains unresolved.
Quantity
4 cups
Quantity
3 tablespoons
loosely packed
Quantity
1 stick
about 3 inches
Quantity
2 tablespoons, plus more to taste
Quantity
1 strip, about 2 inches
white pith removed
Quantity
1 small pinch
shaved
Quantity
for serving
| Ingredient | Quantity |
|---|---|
| filtered water | 4 cups |
| dried damiana leaves (Turnera diffusa)loosely packed | 3 tablespoons |
| Mexican canela (Ceylon cinnamon)about 3 inches | 1 stick |
| miel de mezquite or wildflower honey | 2 tablespoons, plus more to taste |
| orange peelwhite pith removed | 1 strip, about 2 inches |
| piloncillo (optional)shaved | 1 small pinch |
| fresh lime wedges (optional) | for serving |
Pour the dried damiana into your hand and look at it. You want small olive-green leaves, brittle, with the faint smell of dry mountain shrub when you crush one between your fingers. Damiana from Baja Sur should smell green and slightly resinous, never musty. If it smells like hay or nothing at all, it is too old and the tea will taste like nothing. Turnera diffosa is the plant. Anything sold as 'damiana flavoring' or already blended into a tea bag is not what you want.
Pour the water into a small clay olla or a stainless saucepan and set it over medium heat. Drop in the canela stick and the orange peel. Heat the water until small bubbles cling to the side of the pot and the surface trembles. You want it just under a boil. Boiling water scalds delicate leaves and pulls bitterness out of damiana the same way it does out of green tea. Hot, not violent.
Pull the pot off the heat. Add the damiana leaves and stir once with a wooden spoon to make sure every leaf is wet. Cover and let it steep for 8 to 10 minutes. Not longer. The leaves will give up their flavor in that window, and after that you start pulling tannin and bitterness that you do not want. The liquid should turn the color of pale amber tobacco, with a green-brown depth underneath.
Strain the tea through a fine-mesh sieve into a warm clay jarro or heavy glass pitcher. Press lightly on the leaves with the back of a spoon. Stir in the miel de mezquite while the tea is still hot so it dissolves clean. Taste. If you want it sweeter, add a pinch of shaved piloncillo, not more honey. The piloncillo gives the molasses note that pairs with damiana the way it was drunk in the rancherias of the sierra.
Pour into small heavy glass cups or clay jarritos. A wedge of lime on the rim if you want. In Baja Sur this tea is drunk hot at night and chilled with ice in the afternoon. Both are correct. Cada estado, su propia cocina, and Baja Sur takes its damiana seriously enough to drink it year-round.
1 serving (about 245g)
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