Report on a small, but fruitful, friendly trip to Crimea as part of the exchange of experience within the Tea Club I had an interesting and eventful trip to the Crimea to my tea-mate Zakhariy! In addition to recreation, expeditions to the mountains and fields were planned to study the local flora, tasting already prepared teas and collecting and making new ones. I note right away that everything in this fabulous place was fabulously beautiful, tasty, aromatic and amazing. And how else can it be if there are fields of sage, oregano, lavender, a bunch of abandoned gardens of all kinds of fruit trees and grapes. God, what are the aromaaaats of aromatic herbs heated in the sun !!! Words cannot convey! There, even mountain mint on the slopes of mountains and in caves has some kind of unusual aroma.
These are the thickets of sage:
Moreover, in the mountains and in the fields, it is different both in aroma and appearance. Here is such a mint right in a cave near the alpine spring of St. Anastasia:
And oregano grows right in whole thickets in mountain meadows:
Of course, we collected all this in bags, as well as the leaves of abandoned and feral apples and pears. Moreover, the most fragrant apple leaves were in the apple-tree. Then, all the way from the mountains, I strenuously stirred the leaves in bags for their good withering. And then they were all frozen. I tried green tea made from steamed mulberry, a very pleasant and delicious tea! The taste and aroma are clearly green tea, with a slight astringency and slight acidity.
But the most important discovery of this trip was waiting for us on the banks of a mountain stream. We decided to swim in it. The water is clean, but cold. We swam and went ashore to warm up. And out of habit, I tore off a leaf from the first tree that came across, crumpled it and suddenly felt an extraordinary aroma! I gave it to Zachariah and he was stunned too! The aroma of freshly cut white flowers, delicate, enveloping with a slight astringency of meadow grasses. We began to study this tree and found small black cones on it. It was decided to collect a certain amount of leaves to determine, well, and try to make tea.
In the first photo, the tree is on the right, in the second - in the center a little to the left, it grows right out of the water.
On the way, I remembered how last year I was on an excursion in the Botanical Nikitsky Garden near Yalta, and there they showed a similar tree with exactly such cones and said that ink was made of them before. So we managed to establish that it is black alder. Upon arrival, Zakhary hardened the withered leaves according to his own method, scrolled twice through a meat grinder and fermented for 3 hours. Fried and dried.I could not resist and brewed it. The tea was amazing !!! The aroma of elite expensive tea with a hint of white flowers and meadow herbs, it is tea aroma, slightly sweetish and with a stunningly long tart aftertaste. The taste of tea was clearly felt in the mouth and after an hour. It was spoiled a little by the obvious bitterness at the end, although many of our fruit teas lack exactly the tea bitterness. And his color was not pronounced. It was decided to collect more leaves and conduct various experiments. In short, we took two large sacks, each a sack, dried and frozen. Zakhary made with him mixes with spicy-aromatic herbs again after hardening according to his own method and got an excellent amazing result, since the bitterness significantly decreases when diluted with any other leaves already in a ratio of 2/3: 1/3. I tamped my bag as best I could and put it in my luggage. In Moscow, I put it in the freezer again, transported it to the dacha, there it again shoved it into the freezer and, dividing it into portions, also conducted experiments with it. I made green stew with raspberries as an addition to the Ivan-tea mix and a separate mix with fruit leaves.
Green simmered with raspberry leaves in a 2: 1 ratio at first disappointed me. The aroma quickly disappeared while still languishing. The granules were loose, but held. After drying, I brewed it and tried it. There was the taste and aroma of a birch broom, which for some reason was dipped into raspberry jam. The color is weak, although I have added some geranium leaves.
But after 3 days the scent returned! And now the taste and aroma of tea was exactly raspberry tea with a delicate aroma of white flowers and meadow grasses. But it is tea, with a long aftertaste and light astringency and bitterness.
Well, the mixes with Ivan-tea and with fruit leaves were immediately incomparable !!! If with Ivan-tea alder went simply as an additive, then in the mix with fruit leaves alder made up 50% of the mixture. Ivan-tea with alder has the taste and aroma of Ivan-tea, slightly fruity, floral, but with a clear tea aftertaste, astringency, long aftertaste of white flowers. The mix has a clear tea aroma, floral-fruity, green, fresh, slightly woody, with a very long-lasting and bright aftertaste, sweetish-tart aroma of white flowers and barely noticeable bitterness!
