Sideritis Scardica grows wild across northern Greece and neighbouring regions, but it's most closely tied to Mount Olympus, the mythical seat of the twelve Olympian gods, which is where this tea takes its name. Hippocrates thought highly of the plant, and it has stayed a fixture of daily drinking across the Mediterranean and the Balkans ever since.
Greece alone is home to at least seventeen species of Sideritis, out of roughly 150 recognised worldwide, among them Sideritis raeseri, euboea, montana and syriaca. The plant also grows in Albania, Bulgaria, Macedonia and Turkey, along with other parts of central and eastern Europe. Bulgaria's relationship with it runs deeper than most: harvesting and cultivation are restricted by law to a small number of licensed producers. During the Iron Curtain years, from 1946 to 1990, knowledge of the plant was largely kept from the public, with tea-drinking privileges reserved for Communist Party members. Bulgarians now drink it widely and casually.
The Greek word 'Sideritis' translates roughly to 'made of iron,' a name some trace to its old use on wounds from iron weapons, though historians disagree on how much of that story is true. It goes by several names besides Mountain Tea and Olympus Tea, including Shepherd's Tea and Ironwort, and Sideritis Scardica is the most studied of the family, going back to Hippocrates and Pedanius Dioscorides in antiquity and picking up again in the twentieth century. In the cup it pours a light, golden-yellow liquor and tastes herbaceous with soft floral notes, a citrus lift, and a sweet, earthy finish that lingers.
Steep a teaspoon of the dried herb in freshly boiled water for five to ten minutes; use one and a half teaspoons for a stronger brew. Honey or lemon suit it well, though it holds up fine on its own. Mountain tea has long been drunk in Greece and Bulgaria as a tonic, and some early research has looked at whether it might support the body's antioxidant defences, and even help ward off early cognitive decline, though none of that is settled science.
