Raspberry leaf vs blackberry leaf
Two Rubus leaves used the same way, fermented by the same method and substituted for each other constantly in bulk blending. Neither tastes of its fruit and both were European tea substitutes.
botanical
What is being compared
Why these get confused
Both are sold simply as 'leaf' in bulk, and the fermented and unfermented versions are more different than the two species are.
Point by point
| Aspect | Raspberry leaf | Blackberry leaf |
|---|---|---|
| The plant | Rubus idaeus, the cultivated raspberry. Leaf is a by-product of pruning fruit canes. | Rubus fruticosus, the bramble. Free at the edge of every European field. |
| Flavour | Astringent and tannic with a hay note, and no fruit character at all. | Tannic with a mild dried-fruit sweetness when fermented, flat and grassy when not. |
| Where you meet it | Sold as a single-ingredient herbal packet, usually plain rather than fermented. | Almost never named on a label. It is the invisible base of most European fruit blends. |
| Fermentation | Bruised, heaped warm for a day and dried, which makes it noticeably more tea-like. | Same process, and it is what makes a fruit blend taste like a drink rather than hot squash. |
| History | A domestic tea substitute across northern and eastern Europe when tea was unaffordable. | The standard adulterant of the nineteenth-century European tea trade. |
The short answer
For a drink in its own right, fermented raspberry leaf is the more interesting of the two. For understanding what is in a supermarket fruit infusion, blackberry leaf is the one to know about.
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