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Sparkling wines, such as Champagne, are more or less sweet (but can be dry), charged with carbonic acid, bottled before fermentation is completed, and before the grape sugar is all converted into alcohol. Alcohol content is 12 percent.

APPLE CIDER

Apple cider is 5 to 10 percent alcohol. This is a nutritious wine carrying with it the apple’s unique spectrum of nutrients.

MEAD

Mead is a wine made from honey. This is a fascinating beverage having a rich history of enhancing merriment while festively benumbing medieval maidens and raucous warriors. Spawned by honey bees—our planet’s most brilliant herbalists—mead is a particularly appropriate menstruum for making herbal extracts. This fermented flower nectar is 9 to 11 percent alcohol.

METHODS OF PREPARATION

Medicated wines are relatively low alcohol content tinctures prepared usually by maceration, in which the menstruum is wine. They have the advantage over water-based infusions and decoctions since they are much more permanent preparations.

Wine infusions lend very well to the folk method of extraction, but are also perfectly suited for the weight/volume method. (See Chapter Twelve for details on these two methods of tincturing.)

DOSAGE

In general, the dose when taking a medicated wine is a tablespoonful to a wineglassful, two or three times a day.

PRESERVATION AND STORAGE

In the choice of a wine to use as a menstruum, the purest and most generous in alcohol should be selected. Sherry, port, madeira, and teneriffe were preferred by the official pharmacopoeias; sherry and port having the highest alcohol content.

Medicated wines are liable to undergo a change with time, and hence it is best that they be made:

• in small quantities

• without heat

• and kept in well-capped bottles, in a cool dark place like other fine wines

TO PREPARE A

MEDICATED WINE

1. Reduce the dried herb to a moderately coarse powder.

2. Combine with pure undiluted wine of your choice (see above list of recommended wines).

3. Macerate for fourteen days; shaking the mixture frequently.

4. Strain.

5. Pour into a sterilized bottle, cap, and store in a cool location.

COMPOUND WINE OF COMFREY

A classic medicated wine recipe. Restorative Wine Bitters.

1. Take one ounce each of dried Comfrey leaf, Solomon’s Seal (Polygonatum biflorum), if available, and Spikenard (Aralia racemosa or A. californica). Reduce them to a moderately coarse powder and add 1/2 oz. each of Chamomile flowers, Gentian, Columbo (Frasera Carolinensis, has a Gentian-like action, include if available), and Cardamom seeds, powdered.

2. Cover these with boiling water, and let them sit in a covered vessel for 24 hours, then add two quarts of sherry wine. Let this mixture of herbs and wine macerate for fourteen days; express and strain. Bottle, cap, and store the wine bitters in a cold place. (Modify the measurements to suit your needs.)

This classic wine-infusion Comfrey compound was used traditionally as a tonic for females to help remedy “female complaints.” I might add that it also serves males to help remedy female complaints. Take a tablespoonful to a wineglassful, two to three times a day.

GRAND MARNIER DOMESTIQUÉ

250 ml primo-quality brandy

I sumptuous organic orange

2/3 cup granulated sugar

I wide mouth 1/2 gallon clear glass jar with a metal lid

(make four holes in the lid so that string can pass through them)

Some string

4 wooden toothpicks

1. Pour the brandy into the jar.

2. Pour the sugar into the brandy—Do not stir this mixture.

3. Push the toothpicks into the orange, one in each of four sides.

4. Affix string to the toothpicks and secure the string to the lid so that when the lid is placed onto the jar, the orange will be suspended 1 to 2 inches above the surface of the brandy (see illustration on the following page).

5. Gently (so as not to jostle the brandy/sugar mixture) lower the orange, which is attached to the lid by hanging in its toothpick/string cradle, down into the jar and tighten the lid.

6. Let this stand wherever it is going