Recipe for Slovenian Mountain Tea (planinski čaj)

September 11, 2016 8:53 PM

I'm looking for a recipe/herb list to make Slovenian mountain tea (planinski čaj). It's available in tea bags in Slovenia, where I no longer am, and we also had a really nice house-made version at Celje Castle. My kids really liked it.

I looked at a bunch of forum posts via google translate, but ... results left something to be desired. Ideally, the herbs would be either available in the states or something I could substitute. (Forum chatter made it look like it's old grandmas gathering whatever they encounter on the mountainside. But I'm not wild about using yarrow, for example, in tea I'm going to feed to my kids.)

Other recipes for alpine tea would also be great.

posted by leahwrenn to Food & Drink (4 answers total)

There's a commercial version of it available with ingredients list here: rosehips, blackberry leaves, blackthorn fruits (might be able to substitute blackcurrants?), linden flowers, rowan berries, peppermint. A specialty herb shop either have or be able to get you all that no problem. If you're in the US, I like Mountain Rose Herbs.
posted by WidgetAlley at 9:26 PM on September 11, 2016 [5 favorites]

AFAIK, there's no definite recipe, because it's a generic name for any herbal tea made with "mountain" herbs. Do you remember which brand you bought? I could look at the ingredient list the next time I go shopping. (Source: live in Slovenia, drink tea.)

The most well-known commercial version is by 1001cvet, linked by WidgetAlley above. This is their recipe:
rosehip fruit 34 %
blackberry leaves 20 %
blackthorn fruit 18 %
linden flowers 13 %
rowan berries 10 %
peppermint leaves 5 %

If everything else fails, I can send you a bunch of tea by mail, to tide you over. :)
posted by gakiko at 12:08 AM on September 12, 2016 [7 favorites]

Response by poster: Do you remember which brand you bought?

Nah, it was just whatever was on the shelf in the Mercator near us. Probably was 1001cvet, I wasn't paying attention. I think it was a pink box.
posted by leahwrenn at 9:28 PM on September 12, 2016

Hm, the only pink-ish box I found was by Franck brand. If it wasn't that one, then it was probably 1001cvet, as they're usually the most prominently displayed teas on Mercator's shelves.
posted by gakiko at 2:50 AM on September 13, 2016