Ceremonial Kava Root, 250 g

The kava we chose for our own bowl

We stock one kava. Before we listed it, we had it analysed against the other kava available on the Australian market. This Vanuatu factory makes the highest quality kava we have found, and of everything it makes, this blend is the most balanced for ceremony. Stronger kava exists. We chose this one for the bowl, and it is the only kava we sell.

Direct from Vanuatu. We buy it straight from a kava factory in Vanuatu, the islands where kava was first bred. The factory is GMP and HACCP certified and works with the growers itself.

A noble kava blend. A blend of noble kava root. Vanuatu’s Kava Act 2002 lets only noble varieties leave the country. These are the kinds drunk every evening in the village nakamal. The tudei types stay at home.

Ceremonial grade. Dried root, ground fine for the strainer bag and the bowl.

If you already drink kava, put ours next to what you have.

The root and the bowl

Piper methysticum G.Forst., dried and ground root. Family: Piperaceae | Origin: Vanuatu

Kava is the root of a shrubby pepper that Pacific peoples bred from a wild ancestor in northern Vanuatu and carried by canoe across Melanesia and Polynesia. It travels under many names: yaqona in Fiji, ʻava in Samoa and Tonga, ʻawa in Hawaiʻi, sakau in Pohnpei. Johann Georg Forster, who sailed with Cook on the second voyage, gave it the botanical name methysticum, the intoxicating one, in 1786.

Across the Pacific the root is pounded or ground, kneaded with water in a wide wooden bowl, and shared from a coconut-shell cup. In Fiji the bowl is the tanoa and the drink opens the sevusevu, the formal presentation a visitor makes on arriving in a village. In Tonga and Samoa the ʻava ceremony marks the installation of chiefs, the welcome of guests and the sealing of agreements, with the order of serving following rank. We sell this root with respect for those living traditions, which belong to the peoples who keep them.

The standard account of the plant’s botany, history and ritual life is Vincent Lebot, Mark Merlin and Lamont Lindstrom, Kava: The Pacific Drug (Yale University Press, 1992).

Preparing it: knead the root in lukewarm water through a strainer bag. That is how we make ours.

What you receive: 250 g of dried, ground noble kava blend from Vanuatu, posted within Australia.

Sold for ceremonial use

Use in moderation. May cause drowsiness. We make no health claims for kava. In Australia kava is regulated as a food under Standard 2.6.3 of the Australia New Zealand Food Standards Code, which permits the dried or raw root and a drink made from it with water. There is more on the plant and the bowl in our Journal piece Kava: the drink of the Pacific kings.

Payment: kava orders are paid by bank transfer only.