When the Mountain Called, WillPowders Accidental CEO Strapped On Her Crampons
It seems there ain’t no mountain high enough to keep WillPowders CEO, Davinia Taylor, from supporting natural and sustainable farming practices in the pursuit of excellence in functional and nutritional food and drink.
Climb Every Mountain!
Bringing an innovative product to market with the potential to improve gut health, immunity and mood is no mean feat. In fact, some might say it’s like climbing a mountain. But the WillPowders CEO doesn’t do business from a cliched leather chair in a boardroom. She’s an intrepid and determined entrepreneur who’s more than capable of strapping crampons to her Adidas trainers and taking a hike to Taiwan.
‘I’m not about talking the talk in terms of sustainable farming practices. I want to be standing on the land, getting to know the farmers who have the most reverence for their produce and the soil it grows from. Visiting the tea growers of the Alishan Mountains was essential for me to understand these growers’ practices and the interdependence of the tea these farmers use to ferment kombucha and the mountain itself.’
Generational Farming on Clean Mountainsides
While the Alishan Mountains of Taiwan are photo perfect picturesque, with their cloud-kissed mountain tops and emerald mountain sides, it’s actually a challenging climate. It rains plenty, it’s misty at some point most days, the sunlight is intermittent and limited and the temperatures vary widely between night and day.
Anyone unfamiliar with tea growing could be forgiven for taking pity on a tea bush and wanting to offer it chemical help to grow like a hothouse flower. But, unlike farming practices in much of the world, the three generation farming family Davinia met shun harsh chemicals. They know the importance of not rushing or forcing a tea plant, allowing it to develop deep root systems to withstand the mountain climate. The tough love makes the tea plants hardy which is better for their longevity and the flavour in the leaves.
In fact, it’s Nature’s own recipe of mist and mountain that helps produce what is often referred to as the ‘champagne of teas’. Alishan High Mountain tea is famed for its low bitterness and low astringency. Its superior flavours and the preservation of beneficial antioxidants, flavonoids and polyphenols are just some of the reasons Davinia opted for kombucha fermented from these teas.
‘As soon as you reach the Alishan Mountains, you can see the relationship between the tea plants and the high altitude, the weather, temperature shifts, the coming and going of sunlight and mountain springs irrigating the soil. There’s no rushing the tea bushes in these conditions. The tea plants grow phenomenal root systems for survival. The family of growers here have great reverence for the mountain and trust in Nature.’
Careful thought for sustainable practice and replenishment of the mountain soil
During her trip to the Alishan Mountains, Davinia was shown one of the circular practices employed in the production of WillPowders Kombucha. Kombucha is brewed from tea and a SCOBY - a symbiotic culture of bacteria and yeast. Once the fermentation process is over, the spent SCOBY isn’t regarded as a waste product. Instead, it is formed into pellets that are returned to the soil for replenishment. Nothing goes to waste - producing the kombucha is truly circular and, of crucial importance, there’s no need to bring unnecessary loads of chemical fertilisers up the mountain.
‘Soil depletion from intensive farming means the food we eat from crops is devoid of essential macro and micronutrients. Even if we eat organically, the soil organic produce is grown on may be depleted. We know selenium and magnesium, crucial to health, are scarce in soil due to intensive farming. I’m passionate about regenerative farming because it returns to the soil what it loses in production.’
Innovative nutrition relies on looking after expertise and reverence for land
‘My battle cry has been the same for a long time: that there needs to be a focus on foods that magnify our nutritional intake. Our bodies crave key elements. Eating food that is devoid of them, even when we think we’re doing ourselves a favour with a punnet of blueberries, if the soil didn’t have the nutrients, they won’t be there, even in a fashionable superfood.’
Whereas ultra processed food processes the nutrients out of raw ingredients, Davinia’s aim is to do the opposite, to offer foods, drinks and supplements that brim with nutrition and make them in such a way that they slot into your day and your handbag so that you never feel too overwhelmed to look after yourself.
‘Fermented foods are a brilliant way to amp up nutrient intake, particularly when it comes to increasing bacteria in the gut which dictates our overall health - improvements in vital aspects such as mood, immunity, digestion, hormone production, skin. However, fermented foods aren’t always agreeable to our palettes because they’ve become unfamiliar to us. Kombucha is a great way to lean into fermented food.’
Davinia is right - we are all familiar with drinking tea. Making the move into kombucha isn’t a step too far for us. And her kombuchas are the quintessential of soft drink delicious, so in true hedonistic and pragmatic Davinia style, she’s catered for our pleasure seeking human ways and she’s providing offerings for our bodies with the definitives they need to thrive.
‘I want to innovate products that go on to support future innovations from soil that is rich and replenished. The more we can get back to a symbiotic relationship with Nature, the more we can reclaim food production from industrial farming and from factories where nutrients are removed from food, rather than amplified as they are, for example, in the production of kombucha.’
WillPowders Customers Are a Discerning Bunch
Davinia’s not about to let any nasty surprises lurk in her products and that’s why she goes up the mountains to meet the producers. It’s just as well because WillPowders customers are discerning and ask pertinent and probing questions of her products, something she encourages.
‘I want our customers to ask questions. For me, anyone becoming more curious about the provenance of food and drink and how it’s produced is fantastic. Quite right there should be no corner cutting in what we put in our bodies - it dictates our ongoing health. We study the science at WillPowders to bring clean and functional foods to market, and with cutting edge products, like our kombucha that contains psychobiotics, we fully expect to be asked what decisions have been made in sourcing and production. I didn’t set out to be a CEO, but given that I’ve become one accidentally, I’m going to make the effort to get out there and know my products come from the integrity of the growers and farmers. I know I can trust the expertise and passion that they have. It means I can stand up for my products and nail my colours to the mast.’
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