THE MERRY MONTH OF MAY

I love May. I start the day singing the May song from Camelot. It is the best time of year to me. Everything is blooming, the sun is up earlier and sets later. It just feels joyous and makes me jump out of bed in the morning. You want to get outside and experience everything. It was amazing to have the full flower moon on May day this year. Normally that would have been great for building a bonfire to jump over to send out your sweet wishes. But we are outdoor fire adverse right now since all the fires.

As a kid, we always collected flowers and made little construction paper baskets to drop off at the neighbor’s house. It was fun and mysterious as we would just leave them on the door step. Later in life, we always set up a maypole. It seems hard to get anyone involved in that now, even young kids. My maypole broke in the winter storms, and I haven’t replaced it yet, but I did bring in lots of flowers from my garden, lit rose scented candles and listened to Celtic music. One thing was missing though — May wine. It is a German white wine that has sweet woodruff and sometimes a few other spring herbs. If you are having a May Day gathering, it is fun to have but harder to find this pre-made German wine these days. You can make your own if you can find sweet woodruff. You will need about 15 springs of woodruff to add to dry white wine. You need to use dry woodruff leaves so purchasing already dried woodruff would be the way to go. Add the leaves to a bottle of white wine. You will need to remove some of the wine to make room for the leaves. A 24 hour steep is enough to flavor the wine. I pour out a little of the wine into a glass pitcher and cover it overnight. The next day, strain off the herbs and put the wine into the pitcher and chill. If you have access to fresh woodruff, you can leave some flowers in the wine. Normally it would be served with wild strawberries or you can use sliced commercial ones. The wild ones are tiny and don’t need to be sliced. The taste better too, but are also hard to find these days.

I had a gathering a my house and forgot to get sweet woodruff in time, so I just served white wine with strawberries. A lot of people add sparkling wine to the drink, but I must say it detracts a bit from the woody herbal flavor of the sweet woodruff. I like to serve this in chalices but any wine glass will do. Serve it with the foods of spring like asparagus, peas, leeks, and artichokes. A nice tart filled with these foods would be perfect. I know May Day has passed but typically this drink was served all May and even into June. Give it a try. Enjoy!