Ingredients · Fruit

Black Currant

Ribes nigrum · Grossulariaceae (currant family)

Black Currant
The most intensely flavoured berry in this shop, and the one that most needs company. Raw blackcurrants have a strong, tart flavour that has to be moderated by combining them with other fruit — which is exactly what a blend does. Five products carry them. A small amount gives a fruit tea a deep, dark, almost winey backbone that nothing else here provides, and turns the cup a dense purple.

What it’s like, and how to use it

The partBerry
KindFruit
CaffeineCaffeine-free
Where it is fromCentral and northern Europe, northern Asia (native range)
TasteStrong, tart and deeply winey; too intense to stand alone, which is why it is always blended

How to use it

Use less than you think — it will dominate. In berry and fruit infusions, where it supplies depth. Good hot; very good iced. In mulled drinks.

With food

Apple and pear, which soften it. Cream. Dark chocolate. Lemon. Red wine. Game and duck. Vanilla.

With spices

Cinnamon and clove for mulling. Vanilla. Star anise. Lemon peel.

With tea

Black tea, especially Ceylon and Assam. White tea, where it is used here. Hibiscus. Rooibos.

Its story

Where it comes from

Native to temperate parts of central and northern Europe and northern Asia. In Britain it is overwhelmingly a processing crop — 95 per cent of blackcurrants grown there go into Ribena and similar drinks. No lot origin is named in our notes.

What happened

Two national stories, opposite in every way. In Britain, from 1942, blackcurrant syrup was distributed free of charge to children under two — a wartime measure that made the blackcurrant a permanent part of British childhood taste. In the United States, at almost the same time, it was banned: the plant is a vector for white pine blister rust, a disease of the timber industry, and blackcurrants were illegal to grow for much of the twentieth century. The federal ban was handed down to individual states in 1966, and New York did not lift its own until 2003. The same berry, beloved in one country and outlawed in another, over a fungus that attacks pine trees.

On the shelf with it

Every product it goes into.

Every ingredient in the shop

Explore

Other ways in

Ingredients Every plant, seed, bark and salt in the shop on one page — what it is, why it is in the blend, and where it comes from. See them all Collections Every shelf in the shop on one page — teas by leaf and flavour, spices by kind and cuisine. Open any shelf to see what is on it. Browse the shelves The Showroom The whole shop on one floor — every tea, spice and blend, filtered by what you are after, with the basket beside you. Open the Showroom Elsewhere Seventeen short trips — a place, a moment, a feeling — each with the teas and spices that get you there. Take a trip