NORTHAMPTON — William Siff says if he asked 50 people which natural methods they could use to treat a cold or a headache or stress, he doubts many would be able to name any.
Siff, 44, of Northampton, has worked with herbs and natural medicine for two decades. As co-owner and chief herbalist of the Florence-based health drink company Goldthread, he finds himself at the intersection of the health-food business, humanitarianism and self-care ideology.
A licensed acupuncturist educated in Chinese and Ayurvedic medicines who has, at various times, run an herb farm, an apothecary and an internship program called Farm to Pharmacy, Siff said he sees natural medicine as an important but overlooked aspect of health-care.
Siff also speaks frequently at conferences and colleges, and he said he teaches this view with a pyramid diagram. At the top is emergency medicine, followed by allopathic – mainstream – medicine. Below that is natural medicine, like acupuncture, and at the bottom is a section he labels “grassroots,” which constitutes natural self-care.
Goldthread was also the name of the farm in Conway where Siff grew more than 100 varieties of herbs, though in the past tow years he has shifted to the health-drink business.
Siff said the cold, tea-like drinks, called elixirs, originated in the apothecary.
“People would come in for the same problems – digestion, stress problems, immunity, appetite, weight loss,” he said. “Instead of every time making up individual ones, I’d say, ‘Have a digestive problem? Here’s the digestive tea.’”
People would tell their friends and family about them, and they would buy the teas a pound at a time, he said.
Edith Mehiel, 34, Goldthread’s co-owner and chief marketing officer, met Siff five years ago as a student, she said, and a year later, he asked her to work with him.
They looked into buying a building in Shelburne Falls to convert to a center for people to work with herbs, but they decided they wanted to do something where Siff has a more hands-on role with plants.
After scrapping the Shelburne Falls idea 2 1/2 years ago, Mehiel, said the drinks were the logical choice of business.
“They were always kind of there, and there’s that old (saying) – ‘If you could just bottle this,’” she said. “There’s something intangible in Goldthread that he had managed to bottle in these elixirs, and I think that’s something people experience when they drink them.”
Mehiel said when people do drink Goldthread’s elixirs, they are getting 12 to 15 grams of herbs per bottle, from chamomile to elderberry, honeybush to red clover, rose hips to stinging nettles.
Goldthread’s business office is at 221 Pine St. in Florence. Its drinks are brewed in small batches in hundred-gallon vats at the Franklin County Community Development Corp. in Greenfield, and sweetened lightly with citrus, maple syrup and an Asian fruit called monk fruit.
They are now in stores in New York, Connecticut and Massachusetts, including Whole Foods Market in the latter two states. Besides the Whole Foods in Hadley, the Goldthread brand is available in four other stores in Florence and Northampton.
There are a half-dozen elixirs available, each with its own distinctive name and at least eight different herbs.
Honey Rose tastes like the smell of a record shop or thrift store – a sweet, earthy smokiness that recalls incense – and is a favorite among children, Mehiel said.
Schizaam, the most popular drink, is tart and bright like grapefruit or cranberry. Forcefield tastes like a high-end berry iced tea and smells like Thanksgiving.
Orders may be placed online at goldthreadherbs.com/.
The drinks’ prices reflect the organic makeup: online, a six-pack of 12-ounce bottles goes for $41.94; a 12-pack of 32-ounces costs $203.88. Mehiel said the prices are far from outrageous in the health drink world, especially given the herbal content.
“If you’re paying $3.29 for a bottle of something that describes itself as ‘full of herbs,’ and we cost $3 more but have six times the herbs, that’s kind of a bargain,” she said.
Siff said that while the business has yet to turn a profit, its sales are ahead of projections made when it started. “Profit happens in the beverage industry when you get to a certain scale, and we’re still scaling up.”
Siff has more drinks in the works, he said, including a take on matcha, a popular green tea.
He’ll also be traveling abroad this year to find herbs – to Corsica to look at mint, to Madagascar to work with vanilla farmers, and to Korea for ginseng.
But that travel is also part of Siff’s ongoing herbal education, he said, as well as part of his mission to maintain and promote the use of natural medicine.
He often travels with Land is Life, a foundation that according to its website has a mission of “safeguarding the rights of indigenous peoples to protect lands, cultures and biodiversity for all of humanity.”
“It has a direct link to medicine, because medicine is a huge aspect of culture – a lot of these people have a plant-based medicine system,” Siff said. “Helping indigenous peoples helps support plant-based medicine.”
A portion of Goldthread’s revenue also goes to supporting Land is Life, Siff said. It has supported the building of traditional medicine houses by the Mapuche people of Chile and the Kuna people of Panama, as well as the planting of a clove tree nursery in Madagascar.
Those plant-based medicine systems show benefits for the people who use them, Siff said, with fewer instances of diabetes, hypertension and some types of cancer.
And while these drinks will not cure chronic illnesses, he said they nourish people’s health. Some of the drinks are engineered to provide nutrients, while others catalyze organ function or improve blood circulation.
“You drink these things because you want more energy, or because you want to digest food better … things everyone has to deal with,” he said. “They’re fundamental in that sense.”