After water, tea is the second most popular drink in the world. Perhaps when you think about countries with a rich cultural tradition of tea making, France wouldn't be at the top of the list. What you might not know is that France is home to a very distinctive tradition of making herbal infusions, known as tisane.
What are French herbal teas?
Tisanes are not actually made of tea plant leaves. Instead tisanes are made from a range of herbs, barks, fruits, seeds, spices and dried plants, which could be found locally in the French countryside. For this reason, rather than relying on tea leaves that had to be imported from Asia, tisanes provided an opportunity for vibrant local cultural traditions of drinking hot infusions to develop. Rather than being just an alernative to tea, tisanes are popular in France due to their beneficial health and calming properties. Aditionally, as these herbal drinks are not made with tea leaves, they contain no caffeine. This makes them a favourite hot drink for any time of the day, either in the morning or at the end of the day. This is a big bonus as it means that tisanes are perfect for the evening time, or whenever you feel like you would like a break from caffeine. In France the term tisane is used to denote all non-caffeinated infusions and are very much loved.
How are the French herbal teas made?
The herbs are often grown by small scale local producers, who often sell the dried herbs themselves, or supply another producer. The production process requires specialist knowledge which is often passed on from generation to generation, or learnt through courses that can take several years and are accreddited by a recognised body representing the profession.
The first part of the process consist of picking the ingredients. The picking period depends on the particular part of the plant that is to be collected and chosing when to pick the plant is crucial for ensuring a high quality of the products. Some of the plants are not actually grown by the producers, but instead picked in the wild, which requires a knowledge of where to find them and how to pick the herbs in a usstainable way. The next stage in the process is selection and quality control to make sure that only the most suitable leaves, flowers, stems and berries are kept for the final tisane. Manual sorting is usually done before the leaves are dried, while mechanical sorting usually occures aftr the drying process. The final stage before packing is sieving.
Sieving can often be a multistage process, which will determine the final quality and price of the herbs used for a herbal tea. At firt stage, using the largest sieve, the best quality parts of the plants such as leaves, flowers and roots are selected.The second sieving is for sorting through all the dried ingredients that were not removed in the first phase. It is in the second sieving that typically broken leaves, parts of flowers will be picked. These will serve to create most commonly found, and slightly lower quality tisanes, which might not have as intense a flavour due to the dried ingredients being incomplete. The herbalist will use the third sieving (using the smallest sieve) to collect all the small broken parts of the herbs, which too will serve to produce tisanes.
Preparing your herbal tea
There are different methods for brewing tisane. All aim to allow maximising the extraction of active ingredients from the plants. Mint and Lemon Balm are often macerated, that is soaked up in cold water for several hours to extract the favour and the active ingredients. Other methods consist of heating up the herbs in water, but below a boiling point for a few hours. The method of infusing plants is by far the most popular as it only takes a few minutes. Infusion consists of pouring hot water onto the plants and letting them brew for a few minutes. It is important to let the infusion cool off a little so that you can enjoy the best flavour. Herbs such as lime blossom. star anise and sage make for great infusions. The final method of preparing herbal teas is decocotion. This is usually used for harder parts of the plants such as roots, stems or bark. Unlike in the case of infusing, you actually let the ingredients boil for a few minutes to extract all the ingredients, before letting the mixture cool off. This is a popular method for ingredients such as cherry tails and horsetails (yes, it is a type of a plant). You can perform all of these methods at home. It is often a good idea to add a little bit of sugar, honey or maple syrup to your herbl mixture to sweeten it a bit.
Tisanes and French culture
In French culture, there are hundreds of varieties of plants that are thought to have beneficial health properties. The tisanes are commonly sold in specialist shops, on supermarket shelves, in upmarket boutiques in Paris and most commonly, in pharmacies across the country. In pharmacies you will find a selection of tisanes from a variery of producers, often from a particular region, or locally sourced. The tisanes can often target specific health needs. The popularity of the herbal teas is also increased by official endorsement from the French public health service. The popularity of herbal teas made from natural ingredients fits within French holistic approach to health, including the widespread use of homeopathy.
Some of the most popular plants that are used for brewing herbal teas include chamomille which is thought to have calming properties. Others include dried chrysanthemum leaves, which lower blood pressure and help with chest pains. Other popular ingredients include fennel seeds, ginger root, mint which refreshes and aids digestion, mulberry leaves, nettle, sage, thyme, rosemary leaves which support the function of liver, lemon balm and linden, which relaxes your muscles and helps to fall asleep.
Will you try some of the french herbal infusions? If so, you can find some of the carefully prepared plant mixtures in our store.