Pomegranate
One of the oldest cultivated fruits of the Near East, of which the peel, the flower and the seed are all used. The dried peel is a firmly tannic infusion material quite unlike the sweet juice most people associate with the name.
Identity
- Botanical name
- Punica granatum
- Family
- Lythraceae
- Part used
- Fruit, Flower
- Origin
- Western and central Asia and the northern Indian subcontinent
- Drunk in
- Iran, Turkey, Azerbaijan, India
Character
Overwhelmingly tannic — one of the most astringent materials in the catalogue — with a dry fruit note behind it. Nothing like the juice.
Notes: pomegranate, leather, wood
History
Domesticated in the Iranian plateau and present in Bronze Age Mediterranean trade, and it appears throughout the region’s religious and mythological literature. Iran remains the centre of pomegranate diversity, with hundreds of named varieties.
How it is drunk
Juice and molasses are central to Iranian, Turkish and Caucasian cooking; the dried peel is infused in Iran and India, and the flower is used in Ayurvedic preparations and in some regional drinks. The seed is eaten fresh everywhere it grows.
Production
Peel is a by-product of juice production, dried and either kept in pieces or ground. It is extremely tannic and darkens with age, and it was historically a dyeing and tanning material as much as a food one.
Preparation
Decoction · Infusion
Boiling and decoction
1–3 g/100 ml · 98–100 °C · 10 min
What gets confused
Peel, flower and juice are three different products of one plant and only the juice is sweet. 'Pomegranate tea' on a supermarket shelf is almost always hibiscus with flavouring.
Common mistakes
- Expecting sweetness. The peel is a tanning material and tastes like one.
Related botanicals
- Hibiscus — Tannic red fruit materials that were dye and tanning stuffs before they were drinks.
Comparisons
- Pomegranate vs hibiscus — Two tannic red fruit materials that were dyeing and tanning stuffs before they were drinks. Pomegranate peel is the most astringent thing in this catalogue and tastes nothing like the juice.
- Pomegranate vs barberry — Two Iranian sour materials, one of which is a tanning agent and the other a table fruit, and both graded almost entirely on colour.
- Pomegranate peel vs sumac — Two western Asian souring materials, one of which was a tanning agent and the other a table condiment, and both used where citrus arrived late.
- Sumac vs pomegranate peel — Two western Asian souring materials, both used where citrus arrived late, and one of them is a tanning agent that most people meet expecting fruit.
Evidence for this page
The botanical name, family and distribution above are checked against an external authority. Punica granatum 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 Pomegranate 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.