Rugener
Edit CompanyRecent Tasting Notes
This is a wonderful tart, delicious fruit & herbal tea a friend brought back from Germany. Tart, sweet, delicious. I don’t know where the description ends and name of the tea begins, but this one clearly has bits of apple, ‘sea buckthorn fruit’, orange rind, lemongrass, and more. It’s terrific stuff, with a nice purple-red liquor, and tolerates full boiling water and long infusions. I did a couple of infusions, but I think it would be ok with one longer infusion.
Preparation
I’m not sure what “Rugener” means, that is likely the name, but “Sanddorn” means just that, “sea buckthorn”; well, actually, I’ve never heard of “sea buckthorn”, I would have translated it as “sand thorn herbal tea”.
Or maybe ’Rugener’s Sand thorn herbal tea?
Yes, my wife just confirmed (she is actually German), Rugener is juts a name. So you are right, ’Rugener’s sand thorn herbal tea’
Edited the tea info to try to correct that, thanks!
And guess what? I found it online! At least, the package looks exactly the same, and the ingredients list too:
http://www.reformhaus-rügen.de/ruegener-sanddorn-tee-kraeutertee-100g-p-1211.html
Cool that you found it! Ok, you may have translated it already via Google, but it has: apple pieces, hibiscus, sand thorn berries (or buckthorn berries?), raspberry leaf, mistelkraut (not sure, kraut is probably “spice”), orange peel, rosehips, lemongrass, black thorn fruit?, heather flowers, mallow flowers. I had to use Google/leo.de to translate those last three.
I can easily recognize the apple bits, and have sources for some of those things, but not all. Will have to keep my eyes peeled at ethnic and natural food markets for them.
And some more investigation suggests that Mistelkraut is shredded mistletoe, where kraut refers to stems or roots, rather than leaves or fruit of an herb. Black thorn fruit is the sloe plum, used to flavor sloe gin. Googling this one is pretty interesting.
