When I met up with my friend, Gabi, who is originally from Slovakia, a few weeks ago, she brought two teas for me to try. We had lunch at a Thai restaurant, so I was not able to steep the tea bags right away. Gabi provided a succinct introduction to the teas and reminisced about her life back home, which further enhanced my desire to visit Central and Eastern Europe in the near future.
One of the teas Gabi brought was BIOMILA’s linden tea. The linden tree – also known as limewood or basswood, but with no relation to the citrus fruit lime – is Slovakia’s national tree. I was especially looking forward to drinking this tea, since I had not had tea prepared with flowers picked from large deciduous trees. Gabi’s family uses just the flowers for their homemade tea, but some websites suggest the inclusion of the leaves as well. The second tea was MEGAFYT’s black elder bloom tea, whose main ingredient is Sambuci flos – flowers from the small shrub elder, or elderberry.
Gabi recommended that I steep both teas together in a cup and drink the mixture, as this preparation is quite popular in Slovakia. According to Gabi, under the Communist regime, these herbal teas were deemed purely medicinal and could only be purchased at pharmacies to treat ailments, such as the common cold; for social occasions, people drank black teas from China, India, and Russia. After the Communist rule ended, these teas started appearing in general stores and people would drink them daily. Both BIOMILA’s and MEGAFTY’s websites specify these teas’ medicinal uses and health benefits, linden tea being a remedy for fever and elder tea being a treatment for inflammation of the oral cavity. Visitors can even search MEGAFTY’s products by selecting a symptom or an illness from a dropdown list. In history, politics has always influenced the tea trade. I had not thought about how tea drinking habits in everyday life can drastically change with changes in a political system until Gabi mentioned it in her discussion.
I enjoyed the tea combination – the flavor and aroma of the elder blossom tea overpowered that of the linden tea. When I drank them separately, on the other hand, the linden tea reminded me of genmaicha and barley tea, while the elder blossom tea was laden with berry flavor, even though it was made entirely from the blossom, not the fruit.
Thanks for the introduction to Slovakian teas. I’m fascinated by different cultures uses and beliefs about tea. These herbal remedies are very interesting to me. I’ll have to ask my herbalist husband if he’s familiar with their medicinal uses.
It sounds like drinking herbal tea for daily leisure.
Interesting; I wonder why these teas were limited to medicinal uses during the communist regime.
Lavender and Thyme sounds like a olvely place. I am glad they serve your excellent Organic Assam and Jasmine Petal. I believe I have reviewed both of those teas.In any case, I hate to have to say something negative, but I hate even more to see a particular factual mistake continue to spread.Lavender and Thyme believes they are following English tradition . If so, they have misnamed their event. What they are holding is afternoon tea, not high tea.High tea is actually an outdated term for the English laboring class evening meal, what we call dinner. It consist of a hot meal with a hot meat dish and accompanied by tea. It is called high tea because it is served at the high (kitchen or dining room) table.The event Lavender and Thyme is having is afternoon tea. This is the tea with scones, tea sandwiches, and sweets. It is the fancier, more social tea. It is also called low tea because it was originally served in parlors and sitting rooms on the type of low tables that are in such rooms.Hopefully you can pass this information along to them and they can name their event properly. However, tearooms and other places all across the USA make this mistake everyday, so they will not be alone if they keep the name.Congratulations on having Two Leaves and a Bud served there. I hope it motivates many more people to purchase your lcvely teas.