Teaberry and partridgeberry tisanes (natural wintergreen herb tea)

 

teaberry!  aka wintergreen.

partridgeberry; smaller, rounder leaves.

I've long since been intrigued by the possibility of making an herb tea / tisane from teaberry leaves, or at least a plant type I grew up knowing as teaberry.  In reviewing background for this post it turns out that two different local plants--that are common where I'm from, Western Pennsylvania, where I visit now--are both probably referred to as teaberry, when one is a variation of partidgeberry.  Or so a couple of online sources indicate; it's hard to drill down to the absolute fact of the matter in online references.  

Let's start with what I understood, beyond picking and eating what I took to be teaberries.  I've read different accounts about using teaberry as a tisane, including a claim that it oxidizes well, as "real tea" does.  Here is more background, from the book "Secrets of Native American Herbal Remedies:"

Wintergreen (Gaultheria Procumbens) is an aromatic evergreen shrub native to North America.  Also called Canada tea and deerberry, wintergreen is often used to relieve pain and inflammation.  The leaves of wintergreen contain methyl salicylate, which is closely related to aspirin.  Several tribes, including the Delaware and Mohican, have used a tea made from the leaves to treat kidney disorders.  The Great Lakes and Eastern Woodland tribes have used poultices from wintergreen, applying them topically to treat arthritic aches and pains.

That hadn't really the basis for my interest, but it was interesting.  Wikipedia adds this, about teaberries:

The fruits of G. procumbens, considered its actual "teaberries", are edible, with a taste of mildly sweet wintergreen similar to the flavors of the Mentha varieties M. piperita (peppermint) and M. spicata (spearmint) even though G. procumbens is not a true mint. The leaves and branches make a fine herbal tea, through normal drying and infusion process. For the leaves to yield significant amounts of their essential oil, they need to be fermented for at least three days.

teaberry leaves with moderate bruising, not nearly enough to enable oxidation

teaberry leaves bruised and chopped

It was partly this oxidation potential that made it interesting.  This Youtube video clarifies the difference between partridgeberries and teaberries, confirming that both are edible, as fruits (berries) or leaves.  That correct identification helps explain why the partridgeberry fruit is a little bit minty but the leaves aren't overly so.  This Youtube video passes on guidance for finding and identifying "real" teaberry.

This plant source covers more background, about that second plant type:

Mitchella repens, Partridgeberry, Partridge Berry, Native Bare Root Perennial

A trailing, evergreen herb with white, fragrant, tubular flowers in pairs. Partridgeberry is a creeping, perennial herb, no taller than 2 in. high. All parts are dainty, including its pairs of small, rounded, evergreen leaves; tiny, trumpet-shaped, pinkish-white flowers; and scarlet berries.

A most attractive woodland creeper with highly ornamental foliage, it can be used as a groundcover under acid-loving shrubs and in terraria in the winter. The common name implies that the scarlet fruits are relished by partridges, and they are consumed by a variety of birds and mammals. Indian women drank a tea made from the leaves as an aid in childbirth.

No one brews an herb tea / tisane from either of these plants where I'm from, typically; the teaberry name isn't necessarily taken as an indication that drying and brewing the leaves would be a great idea.

I've tracked down both, growing right beside my parents' and brother's homes, and have made a tisane out of both (attempting some rolling of the leaves, then drying them).  At time of writing an early draft I've only brewed the teaberry leaves, but I will write this related to trying the other.

Teaberry tastes minty, as this one passage suggests; the leaf flavor really is "wintergreen."  The teaberries don't taste that much like the leaves, but there is some overlap.  I'll skip adding more on partidgeberry character in this intro section, but related to tasting fresh leaves they just taste a bit vegetal, without much flavor coming through at all.

Preparation and review:

I tried out bruising / rolling the leaves to support oxidation, but it didn't seem to have much effect.  I'm not sure that the compounds in these leaves are right for this transition (either of them, really), or if I just didn't bruise them enough.  I suspect using a mortar and pestle and really grinding the leaves a bit would help, where I just tried rolling the partridgeberry with a rolling pin, and pounding the teaberries with a mallet for tenderizing meat, then slicing those into thin strips, to support more air contact to internal leaf compounds.  Onto review notes then.

teaberry / wintergreen brewed on the lighter side

Teaberry:  it tastes like wintergreen.  For some people that's all I would need to say, if that mint flavor range is familiar.  It's less peppery than peppermint or spearmint, but closer to spearmint for being milder.  It's quite sweet and pleasant.  I didn't use enough to really dial up infusion strength, maybe 3 grams for two rounds of Western style brewing, but it was enough to see how it would work out.

It seems odd breaking that down further.  It was minty, along that particular line for flavor, wintergreen.  There's not much to add.  There was no astringency, or vegetal range character.  I suspect that variation and depth could be had by properly oxidizing the leaves, but I'm out of time to experiment with that here, and I'm not carrying fresh plant leaves back to Thailand.  I could rapidly dry some, skipping an oxidation step, but I've already tried that prepared herb version.

I brewed the leaves twice and mixed the mostly spent leaves with partly brewed out black tea, from breakfast, and the resulting mix tasted strongly of that one mint note, in a pleasant way.  Apparently they had more to give.  Simmering the leaves might be promising, really forcing flavor extraction.  Or there's a masala chai trick of simmering tea and herbs, letting it sit, re-simmering it, and letting it sit again, resulting in brewing at or near boiling point temperature for an extended time.

Partridgeberry:  there is a trace of mint, but not much, and beyond that the vegetal range flavor is a bit subtle.  It doesn't taste like much.  It's nice that it can be used as a tisane, and I suppose it could be helpful if it really does have medicinal qualities, but related to the experience of drinking it there just isn't that much going on.  Teaberry leaves as a tisane are interesting and pleasant, but partridgeberry leaf isn't.

One might wonder why I'm going on and on about plants that produce berries in relation to brewing the leaves, and leaving the berries out of it, not brewing those.  They're not berries in the sense of strawberries or raspberries; they're subtle in character.  Teaberries are pleasant, sweet and minty, but partridgeberries don't taste like much at all.  Teaberries aren't really flavorful enough to be promising as a tisane, brewed alone, although maybe I'm wrong, and that might work.

There's one mystery left in all this, related to ligonberries, which are described as the same thing as partridgeberries in some references.  How is this possible?  Ligonberries are relatively similar to cranberry; they should be quite flavorful and tart, but these are almost entirely flavorless.  Two possibilities come to mind, but there may be others:  these aren't really a variation of ligonberries (or just that, called a different name), or they are related but it's a plant type variation, that isn't identical.  I don't know, really.  Intensity could vary by season, related to time of the year, but surely not as much as this, to cause a strong-flavored berry to be flavorless some of the time.

At any rate the one plant people refer to as teaberries locally really is that, and its berries are sweeter and more flavorful, with the leaves "wintergreen" in flavor.  The other doesn't taste like much, as berries or dried and brewed leaves.

Family visit photos, back to Western Pennsylvania

As I'd mentioned I've been in Western PA, visiting my family.  These notes, and most of the text, is from that visit, and I finish the editing while traveling back to Bangkok again.  I won't add much more about that, but I will share some photos from there.

view from a balcony at my parents' house

the colors change fast; this was two weeks later

a hunting lodge sort of theme

again earlier in the stay, a creek beside their house

not much later, showing more color

my kids and two cousins

meeting those kids was a main highlight (and one other); it was hard leaving them

holiday travel, tisanes / herb teas from pine needles

snow-Dad and snow-girl, at my parent's house (and some pine)

Long time no see!  I just returned from an extended trip back to the US, with stops in Western Pennsylvania to visit family, to Washington DC, and New York City, then onto a short stop in Taiwan on the way back.  I'll add a post about making an unusual version of a tisane / herb tea before getting into the more typical travel blog / tea blog hybrid post, since those notes are already basically a post.


The subject of tea did come up in New York City, and of course also in Taiwan, although I didn't have time to do it justice there, since it was just a three day layover to look around.  The tea theme dropped for the vacation, much more so than is typical, since the airline lost my luggage, so the dozen or two samples of different teas I'd packed were off shuttling around wherever, but not making it to me in the first two places we went.


I made herb "teas" from white pine and hemlock (pine, not the plant that killed Socrates), then later using red pine and Norway spruce.  This pine needle "tea" subject has came up a few times, most recently in discussing Christmas tea blends (here and here), some of which contain pine needles.  This summary post of that content for TChing (a different kind of tea blog site) drifted a little further into pine needle tea scope:


Beyond the basic set, other recipes add nuts, fruits, other spices, pine needles, mint, cacoa nibs or chocolate, and even peppermint candies...  A touch of rosemary might bring out that pine aspect to avoid experimenting with using needles from pine trees, which also does sound interesting.  Per my understanding most pine needles work for making a safe and healthy tisane, with more on that here and here, with a great deal of caution in order for preparing any wild plants as tisanes.


Odd quoting myself.  I didn't sweat the risk, I just drank tea made from pine needles, with more to follow on how that went.  One part of the traditional back-story--perhaps just myth--is that Native Americans taught the early settlers to make pine needle tisanes, a drink that provides lots of vitamins and minerals, including plenty of vitamin C.

Tasting notes:

I might first mention since my parents live in rural Western Pennsylvania I just walked outside and picked these needles off trees.  They're organic; no way anyone was adding fertilizer or pesticides to trees that just grow wild (although they had planted the one Norway spruce pine earlier from seedlings, but it was up to them to make it on their own without chemicals).

White pine: of course both diced needles smelled exactly like the pine types, and the brewed versions did too.  Both were really piney.  I brewed both for more than five minutes, in an open mug, perhaps not ideal but workable.   The white pine was a little lighter, although both were light and sweet (unsweetened).  It had a trace of dryness along with the pine - range taste.



White pine top, hemlock bottom



chopped needles

Hemlock:  the teas shared a lot of taste range but this was warmer and fuller, matching the way the trees smell.  They smell a lot stronger if you just break off and twist the needles, like doing a hiker's version of aromatherapy,  versus just smelling the tree or whole needles. 


Both were nice, to me, but it helps being really into teas, tisanes,  and herbs to begin with.  Supposedly both, and any true pines, are safe, and healthy, but at a minimum nothing negative seemed to come of drinking a few cups of it.

the "tea" brewed quite light but with plenty of flavor

I collected two more needle types for a second tasting, red pine and Norway spruce, both from my parent's house (all four). 

one source:  definitely organic

Norway spruce:  close to white pine, piney--they all are--subtle and sweet.  There is a trace of dryness but it feels soft and rich.  The feel has a resinous character,  as one would expect.   Of course it's not remotely close to any tea, to camellia sinensis. 



Besides pine it's hard to describe much, even though it is distinct from the red pine.  The needles are small and delicate, and relatively short, not as stout and thick as blue spruce,  which one would imagine to be a lot less subtle. 

really more the vacation theme, visiting family

Red pine:  this pine has much thicker, longer needles,  the longest of any local pine types.  Scotch pine is the mid length needle tree recognizable as the standard Christmas tree.  As a child I helped my grandparents run a pine tree farm, clipping the trees in the spring to reinforce that typical shape, but they grew lots of types.

Norway spruce left, red pine right

The red pine tisane (herb tea) is stronger, a bit dryer. It's hard to go further with taste aspect parallels; they taste like pine (or maybe a little like rosemary).  My dad said the spruce tasted like a mild turpentine,  and the spruce like a more robust turpentine, and that's actually not so far off.  Another family member that tried the second batch compared them to the juniper in gin, also a pretty good correlation, but none of them like the effect enough to finish those teas.

A first infusion brewed for a standard four or five minutes, coming out light, even though I'd finely diced the needles to let them brew.  For a second infusion I let them brew out, more like ten minutes.  Differences became pronounced, but still hard to describe. 

I used a brand-new infuser to make it, kind of crazy to do that

The spruce is lighter and sweeter still, but complex and aromatic, not so far from sage.  The red pine almost had a saltiness, not necessarily from salt, possibly the effect of other minerals, a rich taste based around that complexity, with a lot more woodiness.  It's definitely resinous, with a thick, unique feel, based on actual resin.  It is definitely not a good idea to use your normal teaware to make this tisane since cleaning that residue back out might take forever, or extreme measures, like boiling steps and chemical treatments.

All the teas were nice, all different but in the same range.  I liked them, the white pine or Norway spruce best, which were close to each other in effect.  I drink a lot of different teas and a fair number of tisanes, just not quite so frequently, so trying something unusual is standard stuff for me.


I wouldn't give up real tea for drinking versions from pine needles but I'd probably keep those in the rotation if I lived where that grows.  I probably should have harvested an extra couple hundred grams since it was all standing outside growing as part of the natural forest but I didn't get to it.  It might work well in blends, mixing ingredients like herbs, berries, dried fruit, and pine needles to create tisane versions one wouldn't normally even consider, or even local edible roots and bark, if someone really knew what they were up to.  It's probably going a little far to mention a family rumor that I might be part Native American (Americans have trouble keeping track of their own blend of family background), so it's nice to think I might just be getting back to my roots.

playing cards, not so interested in pine needle tea