Blackcurrant leaf
The leaf of the blackcurrant bush, which carries a startling amount of the fruit’s aroma — far more than most fruit leaves do. It is infused across France, Russia and eastern Europe and is a by-product of a fruit crop rather than a plant grown for the purpose.
Identity
- Botanical name
- Ribes nigrum
- Family
- Grossulariaceae
- Part used
- Leaf
- Origin
- Northern and central Europe and northern Asia
- Drunk in
- Burgundy, Poland, Russia, Britain
Character
Recognisably blackcurrant on the nose with a sharp green edge, and astringent in the mouth without the fruit’s sweetness. One of the few leaves that genuinely smells of its fruit.
Notes: blackcurrant, green, boxwood
History
Blackcurrant growing expanded enormously in Britain during the Second World War, when the fruit was one of the few domestic sources of vitamin C available, and in France it underpinned the crème de cassis industry from the nineteenth century. The leaf has always been a secondary harvest from those plantings.
How it is drunk
Brewed in France as feuille de cassis, in Russia and Poland domestically, and added to Russian tea and to preserved fruit. It also flavours some commercial cassis products alongside the fruit.
Production
Leaves are picked in early summer before or during fruiting and dried at low temperature. The aroma is in surface glands and hot drying strips it, which makes cheap machine-dried material noticeably duller.
Preparation
Infusion · Blended with tea
Herbal infusion (tisane)
1–2 g/100 ml · 90–95 °C · 6 min
Category-typical practice rather than a measurement for this specific botanical. Most infusions are far more tolerant of a long steep than tea is.
What gets confused
Unlike raspberry or persimmon leaf, this one does carry the fruit aroma — the comparison people make between them is wrong in this specific case.
Common mistakes
- Expecting sweetness to match the aroma. The smell is fruit and the taste is leaf.
Related botanicals
- Blackcurrant — Leaf and fruit of one bush, and unusually the leaf really does carry the fruit’s aroma — but none of its sweetness.
Comparisons
- Blackcurrant vs blackcurrant leaf — Fruit and leaf of one bush, and unusually the leaf really does carry the fruit’s aroma. What it does not carry is any of the sweetness, which is where the surprise sits.
- Blackcurrant leaf vs raspberry leaf — Two fruit-bush leaves, and the interesting thing is that one carries its fruit’s aroma and the other carries none at all. That difference is real and is not what most people expect.
Evidence for this page
The botanical name, family and distribution above are checked against an external authority. Ribes nigrum L. — GRIN-Global Taxonomy record— retrieved and read, not countersigned by a named human. That source covers naming and distribution only. Everything else on this page — history, culture, production, flavour, preparation and buying advice — is TeaHQ’s own synthesis with no external source behind it.
Brewing parameters here are typical practice for the category rather than measurements of this plant, and each set says so.
This page makes no safety claim. It describes what Blackcurrant leaf is, where it comes from and how it is prepared — not what it does to a person. The absence of a safety note here is not a statement that the plant is safe. How TeaHQ handles this.