Santa Barbara 2011 · Oklahoma City today
Fifteen years of obsessing over plants.
Sun Potion started with one person and a shared kitchen in Santa Barbara. It still works the same way — in Oklahoma now, with a lot more jars.
01
Before the jars
Before Sun Potion, Scott Linde spent about five years living simply in the mountains above Ojai. That's where tonic herbs got hold of him — he'd spend months tracking down one good source of a single herb, just to take it himself.
02 · 2011
A shared kitchen in the Funk Zone
Scott started Sun Potion in early 2011, out of a shared kitchen in Santa Barbara's Funk Zone. The first releases were adaptogens stirred into chlorella — one was called Al-jit. Within months he'd switched to single ingredients, because he wanted to choose his own proportions. Single herbs are still the heart of the range.
The name came out of a word game with two friends. The winged sun came right after.
03 · 2013–2015
Markets, radio and Potions 101
Saturdays at the Meet Your Makers market on Plaza Veracruz. Saturday mornings on KCSB 91.9. Potions 101 classes in the Santa Barbara Public Market's teaching kitchen. The Fermentation Festival, Mercado Sagrado in Topanga, and a first delivery to Lassen's in Oxnard. By the end of 2015, more than 250 health food stores and practitioners carried Sun Potion.
In 2015, the first real warehouse: 430 E Gutierrez Street, Santa Barbara.
From the archive
04 · 2015–2020
The press found us
Alongside the press came the gatherings. Plant-based dinners with chefs and friends. Spring Renewal with Mercado Sagrado in 2016. Free Tea Sessions on Tuesday nights at the warehouse. A mobile apothecary in Miami for Art Basel week in 2017. And in 2019, a dinner under the Santa Barbara twilight to launch the Transcendent Elixirs.
Vogue, British Vogue, Bon Appétit, ELLE, W, Harper's Bazaar, New York Magazine, T: The New York Times Style Magazine, goop, Byrdie, Coveteur, Into The Gloss, Martha Stewart, Well+Good, The Chalkboard and many more.
2019: the first elixirs.
Dinners, salons and Art Basel
05 · Today
Today · Oklahoma
In 2025 Sun Potion moved to Oklahoma. Scott had been spending time out here since 2023: first a dog named Rip, then goats, then a small herd of Highland cattle. We built our own warehouse on the land in northeast Oklahoma, and the box truck came with us.
Violet glass for our Di Tao herbs, our own cobalt jars for most of the rest.
On the land · northeast Oklahoma