Sage vs Greek mountain tea
Two drinks of the same Balkan and Aegean hillsides, both taken with honey, and one of which is sold as loose leaf while the other arrives as bundles of stems.
botanical
What is being compared
Point by point
| Aspect | Sage | Greek mountain tea |
|---|---|---|
| The plant | Salvia officinalis, native to the Balkans, Greece and Italy. | Sideritis scardica, from the mountains of Greece and the southern Balkans. |
| What you buy | Loose dried leaf. | Whole flowering stems tied in bundles. |
| Flavour | Warm, camphorous and slightly bitter, with a savoury depth. | Softly honeyed with a dry mountain-herb note and little bitterness. |
| Preparation | Steeped, a few leaves at a time. | Simmered for eight minutes or more; a short steep gives nothing. |
| Bitterness | Rises quickly with time and heat, and turns harsh past a few minutes. | Low. One of the mildest infusions in this catalogue, and it tolerates a long steep. |
| Where it is drunk | Across the Mediterranean and the Balkans. | Greece, Albania, North Macedonia, Bulgaria and European Turkey. |
| Supply | Cultivated widely and easy to buy. | Wild stands are under real pressure; cultivation is recent and not a lesser product. |
The short answer
Sage is the sharper and more available; sideritis the softer and the one most people prepare wrongly by steeping it.
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