#54 Making tea with wild leaves

Spring is going strong — and with it, a lush garden full of greeneries. As usual, I am running behind cooking projects to keep up with it all.

Lately, I've been experimenting with making tea-adjacent drinks from wild European leaves. I learnt recently that all tea leaves undergo the same general process of withering, oxidation and drying.

For instance, black tea is fully oxidized, whereas green tea is practically not oxidized at all. In between, white tea and Oolong tea are semi-oxidized. Some teas also go through extra steps: post fermentation, aging, smoking, etc.

Through some internet digging, I realized that you can basically make "tea" from a large number of bushes and tree leaves.^[1] The oxidation part removes a lot of the "herbiness", bringing out other aromas.

For my first "tea" experiment, I tried using raspberry and blackberry leaves. (If you are also interested, here is the wild leaves tea recipe). I let both types oxidize for a full day — so it resulted in something closer to black tea.

For the brewing (and tasting) part, I felt a bit pressured, as I don't know that much about proper tea brewing. I decided to go for the simple cold brewing method to be as gentle as possible with the leaves. 3 g leaves for 425 ml cold water, and let it steep for one day.

And I'm impressed! The resulting drinks are fruity, aromatic, slightly sour and herby. For the raspberry tea, I could even taste notes of raspberry.

I will definitely play around with making some more of my own tea.

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