Schisandra chinensis is a deciduous woody vine native to the cool forests of Northeast Asia.
The plant produces striking hanging clusters of bright red fruit. Once dried, the berries become dark red, wrinkled and intensely concentrated in flavour.
Our Schisandra is supplied as the whole dried fruit. It is supplied whole and intact for brewing.
Why Is It Called the Five-Flavour Berry?
Schisandra has one of the most unusual flavour identities in the botanical world.
Its traditional Chinese name, Wu Wei Zi, refers to the five tastes associated with the fruit: sour, sweet, bitter, pungent and salty.
They do not arrive equally.
The fruit is dominated by sharp sourness with touches of sweetness, followed by deeper bitter, aromatic and pungent character as the infusion develops.
It is an extraordinary amount of sensory complexity packed into one very small fruit.
Did You Know?
Long before Schisandra became an international botanical ingredient, Nanai hunters of the Russian Far East carried its berries on long sable hunts.
Ethnographic accounts documented Schisandra as part of the plant knowledge associated with demanding journeys through the forests of the region.
Then the story took an extraordinary turn.
In 1943, in the middle of World War II, the Soviet government formally ordered scientific research into Schisandra.
A wild forest berry carried by Indigenous hunters had travelled an unlikely path into an official Soviet wartime research programme.
