Elderflower

Good elderflower has a fragrant, sweet, floral aroma with that distinctive grapey, slightly tropical lift, and brews to a pale gold. Look for clean, creamy-white to pale-tan dried blossoms with minimal green stem and stalk, since the stalks are both bitter and best avoided. A dull, hay-like, or musty smell points to old or poorly dried flowers, which lose their delicate aromatics quickly. Elderflower is frequently paired with elderberry, lemon, or other cold-season herbs in blends, so read the label if you want it pure. Importantly, the leaves, stems, bark, and unripe berries of elder contain naturally occurring cyanogenic compounds and should not be brewed, which is exactly why reputable tea-grade elderflower is carefully cleaned to the blossoms alone. Store it sealed and away from light to protect the volatile floral oils.

Elderflower comes from Sambucus nigra, the black or European elder, a large shrub native to Europe and parts of western Asia and North Africa, with closely related elders growing in North America. The flowers are harvested in early summer when the umbels are in full bloom, then carefully dried and separated from the green stalks. The resulting blossom is caffeine-free. The same plant's later berries, elderberries, are a separate and very popular cold-season ingredient.

Use about 1 to 2 teaspoons of dried flowers (roughly 2 g) per cup, water at 95 to 100°C, and steep 5 to 7 minutes, ideally covered to hold in the aromatics. The flowers are delicate, so there is no need to push very long steeps, though elderflower will not turn bitter the way tannic teas do. It makes an excellent iced infusion or base for a homemade cordial. It is generally a single-use infusion, with any second steep noticeably fainter.

Affordable: roughly €6-14 (about $6-15) per 100 g, with organic, whole-blossom material toward the higher end.

Prices reviewed June 2026