Beltane Wine

There are probably many recipes for this but here's mine.

You will need:

1 bottle of white wine, anything inexpensive will do
1/2 an ounce of dried woodruff (Galium odoratum)
2 or 3 tablespoons of caster or superfine sugar
1 punnet of fresh strawberries
A plastic jug with 1 litre capacity
A sieve


Pour the wine into the jug, add the woodruff and sugar and mix well.

Put into the fridge and leave overnight or up to a week.

Strain the wine, roughly chop the strawberries and add to the wine.

You can either keep the strawberries floating in the wine or, if you prefer a smooth wine, just allow the strawberries imbibe their flavour and stain the wine delicate pink shade, then strain.

Enjoy or use as an offering.

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Thank you!
I love wine recipes.

Yep, we've used variations of this for Beltane in my coven for many years. One suggestion would be to pick a sweeter rather than a drier white wine. Dry ones will work but they won't taste as good in this combination. Or you can sometimes take a shortcut and find a bottle of strawberry wine. We had a local vineyard that made a luscious strawberry wine every year.

might make this. normally my coven drinks this really inexpensive wine made from berries. guess it's a dessert wine of sorts, my friends don't like wine because it's too dry. [i know that's not the case, took a wine course for school]

The original recipe suggested using German riesling wines, but yes, any medium rather than dry wine gives good results.

Forgot to mention that the woodruff colours the wine to something resembling apple vinegar but the strawberries do turn it pinky eventually. Also, unless you have a very fine sieve, you may have to strain the mixture through some cheesecloth if you don't want little bits of the herb floating in the wine.

Hey everyone, it is getting close to the time of year that I start selling Beltane preserves. Beltane preserves are a custom made type of preserves made with Beltane wine. I make both pink and the red kinds (all of my preserves have fruit pieces in them just as they are meant to) anyone interested should get some when they become available. It may take a while though, so be prepared for a good bit of waiting. But either way they are worth the wait.