Tea & infusions
Wild Wormwood Tea (Chiba)
شيبة · chiba
Chiba is a wild, silver-leaved wormwood-family herb gathered from the dry hillsides and pre-Saharan edges of Morocco, known for a bracing, bitter-aromatic flavour that is the opposite of mint's sweetness. Steeped alone as a strong herbal tea or thrown by the handful into the mint tea pot in winter, it is a herbalist's plant valued for warming the body and calming an unsettled stomach.
- Type
- Wild wormwood herbal infusion
- Served
- Hot, in a glass
- When
- Winter, colds, unsettled stomach
- Key flavour
- Bitter, aromatic, sharp
What Wild Wormwood Tea is
Chiba is a wild, grey-green shrub of the wormwood family that grows across Morocco's drier hills and steppe country, picked and dried in bunches by herbalists and market sellers. Its flavour is deliberately bitter and intensely aromatic, closer to absinthe or sage than to any garden mint, and a little goes a long way in a glass.
It rarely appears as a stand-alone café order. Most people meet it stirred into the mint tea pot in winter — a few sprigs added alongside the spearmint to sharpen and warm the brew — or steeped on its own as a strong home remedy when someone feels a cold coming on or their stomach is off.
How it's made & served
A small handful of dried chiba sprigs is steeped in freshly boiled water, either alone or together with green tea, mint and sugar in the usual mint tea method. Because the flavour is strong and bitter, cooks use it sparingly — a few sprigs are enough to change the character of a whole pot without overwhelming it.
Steeped on its own, it is left a little longer to draw out its full bitterness and usually sweetened generously with sugar or honey to balance it. It is served hot, in the same small glasses as any other Moroccan infusion, and often drunk in one sitting rather than nursed.
In the glass, at a glance
- Dried wild chiba (wormwood) sprigs
- Freshly boiled water
- Sugar or honey, to balance the bitterness
- Often combined with green tea and mint
- Sold loose by weight at herbalist stalls
A flavour snapshot of what goes in.
When & where you drink it in Marrakech
Chiba is sold dried and loose at the herbalist (attarine) stalls of the spice square, bundled alongside the other winter herbs. It is a home and herbalist infusion rather than something poured in cafés, so the best way to taste it is in a household mint tea pot during the cooler months.
A spice souk tour is the most reliable way to see chiba identified and explained by a herbalist, since its dried, greyish sprigs are easy to overlook among the more colourful stalls of spices and flowers.
Cultural notes
Chiba belongs to Morocco's deep herbalist tradition, where wild plants gathered from the countryside are dried, bundled and sold as much for their health properties as their taste. Its bitterness is read as a virtue rather than a flaw — a sign that a tea is doing something for the body, not just tasting pleasant.
Adding chiba to the mint tea pot is also a small seasonal marker: many households keep it for winter specifically, a way of adjusting the year's most constant drink to the cold. Read more about Morocco's winter infusions in our guides.
Frequently asked questions
What is chiba tea?
Chiba is a wild wormwood-family herb from Morocco's dry hill country, dried and steeped as a bitter, warming herbal tea, either alone or added to the mint tea pot in winter.
Why is chiba added to mint tea?
A few sprigs sharpen and warm the usual sweet mint tea blend, especially in cold weather, and it is thought to help settle the stomach and ward off winter colds.
Does chiba tea taste bitter?
Yes, quite deliberately — its aromatic bitterness, closer to absinthe or sage than mint, is part of why it is valued as a herbalist's remedy rather than an everyday sweet drink.