Eleuthero Root Extract.

A cold morning, the kettle on, and thirty drops of something dark and woody stirred into your tea. The tincture pours a deep tea-brown, thick enough to cling faintly to the dropper glass, with the sharp, resinous smell of a plant built to survive frost.

Eleutherococcus senticosus, sometimes called Siberian ginseng, is not a true ginseng but a hardy, spiny shrub of the same family, its roots dug from the cold forests of the Russian Far East and northeast China. Russian and Chinese folk practice long kept it as a general tonic for endurance and steadiness under pressure. Later, Soviet researchers spent decades studying it, and the very word adaptogen was coined partly through this plant.

Details

• Botanical name: Eleutherococcus senticosus
• Root harvested at four years of growth
• Slow-extracted in a grain alcohol base over six weeks, rather than rushed with heat
• A full-spectrum tincture rather than an isolated compound

How to use

Take thirty to forty drops in water or tea, once in the morning, particularly on days that ask more of you than most. It has a bitter, woody bite that lingers pleasantly. Some keep a bottle at the desk; others keep one by the door, on the way out into the cold.

A root that does not flinch, for the mornings that need one.