Making May Wine: Mountain Rose Herbs Recipe Contest Entry

To ring in and honor the first day of May each year, one my favorite seasonal traditions is making May wine. This easy and tasty beverage is traditionally made in Germany where it is served as a spring tonic for the May Day holiday by infusing dry white wine with dried leaves of the Sweet Woodruff herb (Galium oderatum or Asperula odorata). A perennial spreading herb, native to the forests of Northern Europe, Sweet Woodruff contains the compound coumarin, which gives off a sweet hay-like odor that intensifies with drying. Used as a tonic it is good for the liver, and other healing properties include anti-spasmodic, anti-inflammatory, diuretic, and treatment for insomnia in children and adults.

My recipe is about as simple an herbal preparation as one can make aside from tea. I simply get a bottle of white wine and pour it in a quart mason jar with a pinch or two of dried Sweet Woodruff. I did notice a word of caution about this herb in larger quantities in some reading, so the recommendation is to use no more than 3 grams of the herb per liter of wine. This year I got a bottle of Pinot Gris from Sweet Cheeks, a favorite local winery of mine, but in the past I have used whatever white wine I was moved to buy by its sale price.

We have usually gone very simple and plain with ours, by just straining and drinking it, but I have heard a little sugar, some champagne, or sliced strawberries are lovely additions. In years past, I have infused a tiny pinch in some juice for my children and we all toasted each other as “May Royalty” around our spring feast. We got some great family seasonal celebration ideas from Cait Johnson and Maura Shaw’s book, Celebrating the Great Mother, which inspired some really fun May Day festivities in our home. One idea I loved, that we used a couple of years was to have everyone draw a May royalty portrait of themselves and then hot glue a crown of flowers around the head on the paper. We labeled them “The Queen of May”, “The Prince of May”, etc. Then we hung them up and toasted one another with our May wine. It just feels good to live a life “steeped” in tradition!

A Merry May to All!