More Cologne Experiments

I had such a great time making colognes this summer, and the results were so successful, that I tried my hand at a couple more.  The new brews, Fresh Mown Hay and Bay Rum, did not disappoint.

Fresh Mown Hay is a maceration of sweet woodruff (which is left to rest after harvesting in order to bring out it's distinctive hay like scent), orris root, benzoin, roses, vanilla, lemon verbena, linden blossoms and jasmine flowers.  The woodruff not only gives it it's signature scent but also considerable tenacity.  It is a rich, lush fragrance with an almost edible quality to it and conjures images of rolling in meadows.

Bay Rum was definitely inspired by the vast bay bushes lining most of the coastal areas in the New York area. I've been gathering them and cooking with them for many years and finally came around to making a fragrance. Over the summer I gathered leaves and dried them (I read they yield a better fragrance dried) and did my research on formulary and then started to experiment. Using the rinds of some mandarin oranges and freshly ground cinnamon, allspice and cloves I was able to replicate and expand on the traditional scent.

Herbal Liqueurs

For the past couple of years I've been fooling around with liqueur making, especially herbal liqueurs.  I love amaros, Italian bitter digestive cordials, so I've done some research and found a nice old recipe, most of which I could either grow or get my hands on somehow.  I made it last year and followed the recipe but it came out sickeningly sweet so this year I used considerable restraint and made a much more palatable libation.

Liquore de erbe

• 200 ml alcohol 95%bv
• 500 ml water
• 400 g sugar
• 6 bay leaves
• 1 sprig of rosemary
• 10 mint leaves
• 10 chamomile flowers
• 10 sweet basil leaves
• 10 lemon leaves
• 15 sage leaves
• 3 cloves
• 3 saffron filaments

Steep botanicals in alcohol for 20 days. Add sugar syrup. Strain. Age for 4 weeks before consuming.  I made a simple syrup and added it to the brew one tablespoon at a time to the tune of six tablespoons per cup.


Also after reading through recipes of many herbal liqueurs made by monks over hundreds of years, I attempted to create my own recipe using mostly herbs grown in the 6/15 Green Community Herb Garden.  After harvesting the herbs I chose a few things from my apothecary herb collection and began macerating.  After falling in love with Chartreuse earlier in the year I made sure to include a lot of angelica, a principle ingredient in Chartreuese.

                                                                                     Sixfifteen Herb Garden Liqueur

                                                                                          oregano, nine inch stem
chamomile, 30 or so flowers
lemon balm, several handfuls
hyssop, two flowering stems
angelica, half stem
angelica root, one teaspoon
angelica seed, one teaspoon
mint, three large stems
coriander, two flowering tops
rosemary, 9 inch stem
basil, 15 leaves
sage, 4 seven inch stems
dried orange peel, one teaspoon
vanilla, half pod
saffron, five threads
cloves, nine cloves
calamus root, generous half teaspoon
wormwood, dried, three generous pinches
cinnamon, one small stick
orris root powder, half rounded teaspoon
mace, quarter teaspoon
lavender, eight stems
red clover, eight blossoms
yarrow flowers, one flower head

Steep all ingredients in vodka to cover for at least 30 days.  Sweeten to taste with simple syrup and age two months.

Overall both liqueurs came out very good and quite palatable.  I'll keep trying in the years to come but this holiday season I'll be very pleased to serve my guests a little cordial straight from my garden after a full meal.

A Nice Review of my Perfume Blending Class

A young woman approached me after my last Natural Perfume Blending class at 3rd Ward who had been sent to take the class from Brooklyn Magazine.  She had a few of questions and we exchanged contact info.  I was so incredibly delighted to read the review she sent me today from their blog.

I was most pleased to read that "Everyone in the class was really engaged and took notes and participated in the class in a way that was, frankly, really fun to be a part of", and that she though of me as "a lively, informative presence during the class, which she starts off with a history of perfume that manages to be both comprehensive and easy-to-follow for the novice.".  What I hope most about my classes is that they're informative and fun.  It's nice to receive some validation that I'm getting it right.

Elderflower Liqueur

I posted during the summer about my forays into making elderflower liqueur.  Since then the macerated vodka has been sitting on a shelf waiting for me to pay some attention to it and turn it into a liqueur.  I had nearly a wine bottle full of elderflower vodka and a small bottle of St.-Germain to compare and contrast with my creation.

At the onset the macerated elderflower vodka that I made has a dankness to it, a very green note, one that would lock with clary sage, or lavender absolute.  At first I thought it was a honeyed note that was missing so I sweetened a small batch with Lancaster County, PA, honey.  The dankness in the honey locked with that of the elderflower so that experiment was set aside.

The second experiment I sweetened with white sugar.  In the past I've used raw cane crystals instead of sugar but they add a slight mollasses flavor to the brew, as well as an unpleasant dark colored slimy layer that floats to the top of the bottle as it clarifies.  I'm hoping for a better result with white sugar.

After doing a bit more research in elderflower liqueur I noticed that most of the recipes call for lemons or lemon rinds during maceration, often recommending meyer lemons.  Last winter I made meyer lemon vodka so I did a little tweaking with it.  I also took a look at my collection of perfume oils and decided on four notes to be added;  yuzu, wild sweet orange, neroli and peru balsam.  I made 10% solutions of each oil and added them one or two drops at a time.

Also in my research I learned that most people make an elderflower syrup and then add alcohol to produce a liqueur.  I confirmed this yesterday with a Swiss friend who explained to me how this was done in her country.  Some of the recipes I read also called for fresh lemon balm.

Many trials later I've come up with something I think is truly worth sipping.  I even "fixed" the first and second versions and bottled them separately.  The recipe is a little rough but I think I have a much firmer idea of how to proceed next season.  In the meantime I think a cocktail of elderflower liqueur and champagne would be perfect for the holidays.

Elderflower Liqueur

2 3/4 cups elderflower vodka

1/8 cup meyer lemon vodka

scant 3/4 cup sugar

5/8 cups water

13 drops yuzu dilution, 10%

15 drops peru balsam dilution, 10%

4 drops neroli bigarade dilution, 10%

6 drops wild sweet orange dilution, !0%

Natural Perfume Blending Workshop, Part Two

This coming Saturday I'll be teaching part two of my perfumery course.  The class is for students who have taken the first class in Natural Perfume Blending but want to further their blending skills. The original kit of 50 or so oils will be added to with some rare and precious oils such as ambrette, hay absolute, tuberose, yuzu and pink pepper. The concepts of locking and burying will be explored and there will be specific assignments to deepen your understanding of blending and perfume creation, as well as sharpen your sense of smell.

Natural Perfume Blending,

Part Two

Saturday, November 10th

1:30 to 4:30

3rd Ward

195 Morgan Ave.

Brooklyn, NY

Acorn Flour

Last year a good friend went through the laborious process of making acorn flour.  I was intrigued, being the urban forager that I am, but definitely put off by the amount of work.  Then she showed up one day with a slice of bread she'd made and I've been determined to try making it ever since.  The flavor was so intense, rich and flavorful so I was surprised that she only used a third of a cup of the flour along with a melange of unbleached white and whole wheat.

It's acorn season and I've been getting an education in oak trees.  I've learned to identify white oaks, which apparently are some of the sweetest acorns to find.  They're also a substantial size making them worth shucking.  I've collected a couple of pounds from three trees up in Prospect Park and am planning to go back for more.  I can already tell that this hefty bag of acorns is only going to make a small amount of flour, so as long as I'm putting in the time I might as well go all the way and collect more.

I've gotten a lot of information on how to do this from Hank Shaw of Hunter Angler Gardener Cook.  His biggest piece of advice on collecting them was to look for little worm holes and discard those.   Acorns are bitter from their high tannin content and the tannin has to be leached out.  I've seen a lot of different versions on how to do this but his cold water leaching method seems to be the most reasonable.

First you have to shuck the acorns - under water!  With the pointed end facing up I used a hammer to crack the acorns and then threw them into a pan of water.  The hulls are kind of elastic so some come off the nut quite easily while others need to be wrestled with.  Then I threw them in a blender filled with a couple of cups of water.  When I had about two cups of acorns in there I blended them up to make what looks like a coffee milkshake.  The sludge was then transferred into a large jar and filled with more water and put in the refrigerator.  Every day I poured off the water and added more, shook it up and placed it back in the 'fridge.  I did this for a week and then lined a colander with cheesecloth and poured the whole mess through.  Pulling the edges of the cheesecloth together I gently squeezed out as much water as I could.

Now the goal is to dry out the mass.  Spread it evenly on a cookie sheet (preferably one with sides) and set the oven on low.  Mine doesn't have a low setting so I warmed it to the lowest temperature and then turned it off and set the cookie sheet inside.  You don't want to bake the acorns, just dry them out so keep your eye on them.  It took a couple of hours of turning the oven on and off and checking periodically before it was ready.  I used a coffee grinder free of coffee residue to grind the dried mass into flour.  I have a separate one I use for spices so this worked perfectly.  In small batches try to grind the flour as fine as possible.

It's a lot of work for a small amount of flour, that's for sure.  While the first batch was drying in the oven I started shucking the second batch.  I figure I have three more trials to go and I'm hoping to be done in time for holiday baking.  I'll let you know how it goes, and whether it's worth the labor.  If it's as delicious as I remember I'll be thoroughly gratified.  Hank Shaw also has some delicious sounding recipes on his blog which you can find here.

Beach Glass Bottles

Green glass vials from the beaches of Brooklyn.

I've been very lucky this past summer finding bottles on the beach.  I seem to have hit the motherload.  Clear, amber and green glass bottles in all shapes and sizes are finding their way into my collection.  Some of them take on a frosted patina which makes them glow in the light from being rolled and tumbled in the ocean.  I can't help wondering where they originated and what was their original use.

Two perfume bottles

Cleaning them up and getting them ready to be used has been a big job.  They spend a lot of time soaking in soapy water in between scrubbings.  I've collected a vast array of bottle brushes to help with the job.  Once they're squeaky clean they're sterilized in a boiling water vat before they can be used.

Amber vials

A collection of tiny vials

I live my life in a very "green" way, long before anyone called it green.   I deplore waste of any kind so to find these bottles and be able to give them another life is a joy.  I've been collecting caps from broken bottles for ages so spent some happy days sorting through the collection and finding the proper cap.  Some of the bottles will be filled with the colognes I was producing this past summer but some are for sale on my Etsy store.  I love that each bottle is a one of a kind treasure.

Beach glass bottles put to use for my cologne collection.

Park Perfumes Review

The online gardening magazine Soiled and Seeded, dedicated to cultivating a garden culture, has been so kind as to review my trio of Park Perfumes.  This is some of my earliest work and includes some synthetic oils that I couldn't get in nature.  I'm in the process of revising those perfumes using only natural oils and utilizing some of the skills and experience I've accumulated over the past ten years.  The first to be finished is The Ambergill which formerly used a synthetic amber note.

After extensively researching amber I discovered that there is no real amber oil extracted from a plant. There is a pine tree in India that exudes a sap that a lot of it starts from, but then many processes occur and a proprietary blend of oils and macerations are added to create amber in many forms. Some are crystalized in beezwax so a mere touch melts on the fingertips.  These blends are closely guarded secret formulas.

I've had a bottle of amber oil for many years that I bought from the Persian perfume vendors on Atlantic Avenue in Brooklyn. I knew that it was probably adulterated with synthetic materials but I liked that warm velvety chord and couldn't be deprived. This year I made my own proprietary blend with absolutes and essential oils. I'm happy to have come up with a blend I can use in my perfumes without resorting to it's synthetic counterpart.  From that I've created a scented Amber Oil.

Now that I had an amber chord to work with I went ahead and recreated The Ambergill, a perfume inspired by the beautiful Ambergill ravine and falls in the Prospect Park in Brooklyn, NY. A gill is a narrow stream-filled glen, which feeds a grotto known as the Amergill Pool, whose banks are populated by green herons, columbine, wild roses & blackberries. Amber, oakmoss & neroli are the peak notes of this warm perfume.

Cologne Experiment Results

The results are in!  My experiments macerating dried flowers, roost, rinds and herbs are completed and I have detailed notes on the results.  After a month's time the liquor was strained off and clarified and then some were matched with hydrosols.  Certain recipes didn't work at all and were discarded but most of them yielded results.  I was really surprised by the tenacity of the different brews, some of them will last days on a tester strip. 

Summer Splash came as a real surprise.  The floral note that resulted from roses and lavender macerating with vetiver, sweet annie and orange peel was astonishing.  It was blended with lemon balm hydrosol to create a summery splash.  This one changes over time in a most interesting way.

Florida Water epitomizes summer for me. There is a large Latino community intermingled in my Brooklyn neighborhood and a lot of the pharmacies cater to this clientelle so are stocked with Florida Water. I have memories of my first years in Brooklyn discovering the pleasures of an evening shower followed with a splash of Florida Water. Orange blossom and clove are the distinctive notes in the cologne so I decided orange blossom hydrosol would be used with a maceration of meyer lemon rind, sweet woodruff, lavender, benzoin, cinnamon and clove. The results smell surprisingly like the water I used all those years ago, and I think it could be considered suitable for men as well as women.

Verbena Water is the result of macerating fresh lemon verbena and sweet woodruff from my garden, dried jasmine, linden blossoms and vanilla pods and then mixed with verbena hydrosol.  It's as fresh as it sounds, the softness of the woodruff and vanilla pared with lemon verbena counterbalance each other beautifully.

Rose Garden is a blend of dried roses, angelica root, jasmine, vanilla pods and lemon verbena which was then mixed with rosewater to create a veritable rose garden in a bottle.

Violet Water is the result of orris root, sweet woodruff, benzoin and jasmine marrying beautifully to create a woodland violet sort of fragrance which was then blended with cornflower water.  Violets contain a chemical called ionones which give them their characteristic fragrance.  Orris root, the dried and aged rhizome of the Iris pallida, also contains ionones but also has a woodland quality to it.  There are no violets in this blend so the name is merely a suggestion.

Each cologne is bottled in a one of a kind vintage glass bottle collected from the beaches of Brooklyn, NY. They've been scrubbed clean and sterilized but they're old and scratched to different degrees. Expect some wear from tumbling in the ocean for who knows how long.

Making Elderflower Liqueur

Elderflowers macerating in vodka

A few years ago elderflower became the new darling of the artisanal cocktail explosion.  It was hard following up something as popular as yuzu but those people at St-Germain know what's good.  Elderflower liqueur has been on every mixologist's short list in recent past, specifically St-Germain.  I was astonished to discover that this strange, subtlety flavored libation is a new invention and not the ancient tradition their advertising campaign would have you believe.

Elderflowers grow all over Prospect Park and another artisanal cocktail enthusiast told me that he'd made his own liqueur from the flowers in the park.  I made a point of getting together with another friend, a local forager and farmer, to hunt for the blossoms.  Armed with wildflower guides we set out and identified plenty of look a likes but came home empty handed.  A second foray found what we were looking for.

I've read that the flowers must be picked in the morning when they're at their most fragrant, and that they should be used within two hours of picking.  The stems are toxic and undesirable so the flowers were cut from the stem and placed in a wide mouth jar.  When the jar was full I covered the flowers in vodka and capped it.  I'd also read that the flowers will float to the top, and that the flowers that come in contact with air would turn brown.  The flavor is not altered, it's just not very appetizing, so I placed a clean lid from a slightly smaller jar upside down on top of the flowers to weigh them down under the vodka.  Every day I removed the second jar lid and shook the jar, then replaced the lid.

I macerated the blossoms for a little over a month.  Each day when I shook it I would compare the aroma with the small bottle of St-Germain that I have.  It was only in the last week or so that I began to notice a similarity, prior to that I was wondering if I had the wrong genus.  I find a honey note in St-Germain so now that it's been strained, like many of my other herbal liqueurs, it's waiting for that special local honey to be ready before it's bottled and labeled and ready to use.  Results to follow.

My First Class Coming Up at the New York Horticultural Society

Vintage Chartreuse

I spent a day poking around at estate sales in Long Island with a good friend a few weeks ago and had the good fortune to raid someone's liquor cabinet before anyone else got to it.  I bought four bottles of booze, two whiskeys - one a blended Scotch called Black and White and another nearly empty bottle of moonshine labeled "pot still whiskey".  The third was chosen only for the bottle and label.  I doubt I will ever open that ancient bottle of Freezomint but I'll enjoy it's artificially colored glow on my liquor shelf.

The true find was a 3/4 full bottle of Chartreuse.  I've been doing a lot of research the past few years on herbal liqueurs and amaros and have read abbreviated versions of many of the old recipes.  Of all of the old formulas Chartreuse is the only one still made by Carthusian monks.  They have been making it continuously since 1605.  Other liqueurs have claimed to be made by monks but in reality are made by large companies.  Benedictine, for instance, is an invention of Alexandre Le Grand who made up the story of the liqueur being a medicinal recipe of the Benedictine Monks in Normandy.

Chartruese is a secret recipe of more than 130 herbs and "secret ingredients".  The formula is based on a recipe for an elixir of long life from an alchemical manuscript given to the monks.  The monks intended their liqueur to be used as medicine but the beverage became so popular that in 1764 the recipe was adapted to what is now Green Chartreuse.  In 1838 they developed Yellow Chartreuse, a sweeter version colored with saffron.  Only two monks have the recipe at any one time and they are the only ones who prepare the herbal mixture.

I took the vintage bottle to my local watering hole, the magical Barbes in Park Slope, one Saturday afternoon and presented it to the bartender who expertly removed the rotting cork without getting any in the bottle.  We poured a glass of the vintage and a fresh glass from the bar.  To my amazement there was a woman sitting at the bar who had just written a paper on Chartreuse for her French class.  I sat with her comparing the two liqueurs and taking notes on anything that jumped out at me.  Each sip revealed something new.  One sip would coat my mouth in angelica, the next in mace, then mint, then vanilla as I swallow.  I know that Chartreuse is sweetened with honey which is much more apparent in the vintage bottle.

I've been macerating herbs for the past couple of months to make herbal liqueurs.  One of them, a creation of my own which reflects the herb garden at 6/15 Green Community Garden, has a strong similarity to Chartreuse.  Angelica is the predominant note in chartreuse and the garden happens to have a healthy specimen.  I used the fresh green leaf and stalk, dried root that I dug up last fall and the seed I had collected.  I used nearly every other herb growing in the herb patch including chamomile, lemon balm, hyssop, mint, rosemary, basil and sage and fresh spices from the Park Slope Food Coop like cloves, mace and saffron as well as some dried herbs from my collection.  This is my second year in a row creating a liqueur from the garden and I'm hoping this year's will be better for the few tweaks I made in the recipe.  It's strained now and aging while I ponder which honey to use.  I'm hoping to get some local Brooklyn honey at the farmer's market to keep it as local as possible.  I'll be serving my elixir come holiday time.

Cologne Experiments

I'm having way too much fun riding out the heatwave researching old forumlary on the internet in search of cologne and toilet water recipes.  After years of collecting fragrant herbs, dried flowers, roots, powdered gums, tree resins, barks, citrus rinds and spices I wanted to see if macerating in vodka would produce results.  All of the old recipes I found used essential oils, absolutes and tinctures but I wanted to see what I could come up with with just the raw ingredients.

I've started two traditional cologne recipes, a violet water, something akin to 4711 and a Florida Water, as well as one true experiment.  It's been about ten days and I can already tell which ones have promise and staying power.  My plan is to let them sit for 30 days and then strain them off, filter them and let them settle.  Then I'll pour off the clear liquor and blend it with hydrosol.

When deciding on what to use for each experiment I'm still thinking like a perfumer and making sure I have top, middle and bottom notes.  I've been aging some orris root powder for a number of years now and it's developing a subtle sweetness that I hope the tincuring will release.  I also have powdered benzoin, cedar bark, vanilla pods and vetiver roots to play with.  Dried roses and lavender make up the bulk of the heart note but I'm also using a generous supply of jasmine sambac flowers that I've dried over the past year.  The linden blossoms that I collected last year have found their way into one as well.  For top notes I have citrus rinds that I dried over last winter including mineola tangerine and meyer lemon.  From my herb garden I've added sweet woodruff, lemon verbena, lavender, basil, sweet annie and rosemary.

So far I'm loving the process and the romance of it all.  When I was a child my grandmother bought me some cologne that I used as a kind of splash.  I have such fond memories of warm summer nights splashing on her cologne after a bath and going to sleep smelling sweetly.

I'm also enjoying using the fruits of my labor over the years, and feeling like a real apothecary.  I looked around during the process and thought that it looked like a film set of an apothecary at work, yet it wasn't contrived at all.  I find I'm repeating to myself, "oh, true apothecary".

Cocktail Lab, Summer 2012

Lychee vodka being filtered

When Lucy Raubertas, the writer behind Indieperfumes and the inspiration for the Clarimonde Project, asked me if I'd be interested in conjuring up some cocktails for a book release party for a perfume writer I had to say yes.  The connection between fragrance and cocktail crafting has become somewhat seamless lately.  My liquor cabinet is overflowing with fragrant tinctured vodkas, some of which have wound up in a few of my cologne experiments this summer.

After some seriously delicious cocktails at NoMad with Lucy, the author Alyssa Harad, and Maria McElroy of Aroma M Perfumes it was decided that Maria and I would come up with two cocktails based on two of her perfumes.  She decided on Geisha Blanche and Geisha Green, Blanche being a fresh, summery fragrance of white flowers and lychee, while Green is a creative take on absinthe, although mellowed with black currant, mandarin and violet.

Lychees macerating in vodka for First Blush

After our first meeting we had a general idea of how the two drinks would be and had a list of possible ingredients to have on hand for Cocktail Lab.  I brought in veteran Lab assistant Lori Firpo to sit in with Maria, Lucy and I.

For Geisha Blanche we settled on lychee vodka to start.  After struggling to find a good mixer that would still fit the fragrance profile we settled on champagne with a little lychee juice.  We decided on tuberose and jasmine to mimic the white flowers in the perfume which are added to the drink as well as misted over the top before serving.  We call it First Blush

Black currant vodka was the basis for our rendition of Geisha Green.  Boylan's Creme Soda was the perfect compliment and picked up the tonka note in the perfume beautifully.  Wormwood and the natural isolate alpha ionone (with the characteristic scent of violet) were added to tone down the sweetness of the drink and pick up the absinthe notes of the perfume.  Meet Jaded!

First Blush

one jigger lychee vodka

one generous jigger lychee juice (Ceres brand)

one jigger champagne

two drops jasmine dilution, 5%

two drops tuberose dilution, 5%

spray of tuberose and jasmine

Combine the vodka, juice and dilutions in a shaker, mix well and add champagne.  Pour into a martini glass and spray with tuberose and jasmine.

Jaded

one jigger black currant vodka

two ounces Boyland Creme Soda

one drop alpha ionone dilution, 10%

one drop wormwood dilution, 5%

Combine the ingredients in a cocktail shaker, shake well and serve strained in a martini glass. 

Black currant vodka is made by finely chopping 1/3 cup dried black currants and pouring one cup of vodka over them in a jar with a tight fitting lid.  Shake daily and macerate for up to one month.  Strain and store in an airtight bottle.

Lychee vodka is made by peeling and chopping 1/3 cup fresh lychees (including any juice) and placing them in a jar with a tight fitting lid.  Pour one cup vodka over and shake daily for up to two weeks.  Strain and store.

A Little Love from CBS!

A perfumer's scent organ

I'm so proud to be listed as one of the four best places to make your own perfume in New York in the CBS blog by features editor Corey Whelan.  I'm not sure I'm as ethereal as the write up suggests, but I'm pleased to be included.

A consultation consists of a little getting to know you, an explanation of how perfumes are built using top, middle and bottom notes and then in a step by step process learn how to blend a selection of scents into your own personal perfume.  Choose from over one hundred essential oils and absolutes, some rare and exotic, to create a fragrance that is uniquely yours.

Consultations usually take about an hour and a half and are $125/hr and include a quarter ounce bottle of perfume.  By appointment only, (718)788-6480, info@herbalalchemy.net

Summer Workshops Announced

Three new Natural Perfume Workshops have just been booked for 3rd Ward in Brooklyn.  Classes fill up fast so sign up early!  Classes are scheduled for

Saturday, June 9, 1:30 to 4:30
Sunday, July 22, 1:30 to 4:30
Saturday, August 11, 1:30 to 4:30

The sense of smell is so neglected, take an opportunity to develop yours and broaden your scent horizons!

Verbena Water

The newest hydrosol I've added to my collection is Verbena, Aloysia triphylla, also known as Vervain.  For those of you that don't know, a hydrosol is the water that's left over from the distillation process that creates essential oils.  They have microparticles of the original plant material and are scented, flavorful and have many therapeutic properties.

Verbena herb is known for it's effects in dispelling depression and countering nervous exhaustion and anxiety.  Great for headaches and migraines and is said to be one of the best palliatives for the onset of colds and flu.  It is reputed to be a good daily mouthwash as it's strong anti-inflammatory ability has a strong affinity for the mucus membranes of the mouth and nose.

Internally it will settle a nervous stomach and indigestion, as well as being very pleasant to drink.  A tablespoon of hydrosol in a liter of seltzer is wonderfully refreshing.  It could also be added to a pot of tea.  It's flavor is distinctly lemon but not citrusy, and much less potent.  Imagine it in desserts, or with seafood.

Verbena's pH is very close to that of the acid mantle of the skin making it a good clarifier.  It refines skin texture and may reduce pore size.  It seems to suit men as an aftershave since the scent is neither floral nor fruity.

Verbena Water by Herbal Alchemy can be bought here.

Sweet Woodruff

Sweet Woodruff growing in the 6/15 Green Herb Garden

About ten years ago I bought a sweet woodruff plant from the Greenmarket at Grand Army Plaza in Brooklyn.  I put it in the postage stamp garden in the front of my brownstone where it lived for a few years before I transplanted it to the newly renovated herb garden at 6/15 Green Community Garden.  The first spring that it came back in it's new spot I decided to try to make May Wine.  If memory serves I picked several blooming branches and twisted or wrung them out to bruise them and stuffed them into a bottle of German Rhine wine.  Then I recorked the bottle and let it sit for about a week before I filtered and drank it.  I remember loving it, the woodruff had added a green and sort of balsamic note to the sweet wine.

The wine was meant to be drunk on May Day and I never got the timing right again and so never made it again.  It's a shame that I denied myself all those years simply because I couldn't drink it on the actual day.  This year, with spring coming early, I had a chance to catch it in time, not to make May Wine, but to make liqueur.

Sweet Woodruff (Asperula odorata) was used as a medicine in the Middle Ages, mostly as either a poltice for cuts and wounds or a strong decoction for stomach troubles.  It is known mostly for its sweet scent due to its high coumarin content, the chemical known for giving new mown hay its distinctive odor.  Bundles and garlands of woodruff were hung around the house in the heat of summer to "attemper the air, cool and make fresh the place, to the delight and comfort of such as are therein" and is reported to "make a man merry" according to Gerard.  The dried herb may also be kept among linens to sweeten them and protect them from insects.  It was also once used to stuff beds.

Sweet Woodruff drying on parchment

I've read that the coumarins in the plant don't come out until the plant dries.  I picked a small amount and left it to dry overnight on a parchment lined rack.  Right around the 24 hour mark I noticed that the leaves had taken on the distinct smell of fresh mown hay.  It was delicate but it was there.  I thought I'd leave it another day and see if it deepened.  The following morning the leaves had lost their scent almost entirely.  I picked another bunch and kept an eye on it around the 24 hour mark and began my maceration then.  I wrung it out much like I did with the wine and poured a cup of vodka over it.  The liquid began to take on a lovely pale green which deepened to the color of good fruity olive oil.  After two days I decanted it.  It tastes and smells of grass with a honeyed hay note.  I've made three successive batches.  I'd like to try sweetening some to make liqueur, and save some to add to the herb liqueur I'd like to make from the 6/15 Herb Garden this summer.  And of course some of it will be experimented with in Cocktail Lab.  I'll run out eventually but it will be just another thing to look forward to next spring.

Three batches of Sweet Woodruff Vodka

Spring Foraging Inspires (What Else?) New Cocktails

I took a long walk in Prospect Park last week with fellow naturalist and forager Josh Kalin in search of elderflowers in hopes of making elderflower liqueur.  With a little internet research I learned a few ways of creating it and how to identify the plant.  Unfortunately our search wound up empty, at least as far as elderflower was concerned.  We determined that the flowers weren't open yet and made arrangements to hunt again another day.

Not to be deterred we walked on and started hunting for other bounty.  The park is loaded with garlic mustard, a non-native "weed" that the park would rather eradicate.  It's one of the plants I don't feel any hesitation about harvesting knowing that it does more good than harm.  We also harvested violet leaves and flowers, curly dock and gout weed, and stopped to sample a few other things along the way as well.

Still, I had cocktails in mind, or at least the macerated elixirs that plants and spirits engender.  I remember long ago chomping on sassafras along the Long Meadow.  Josh remembered another sassafras tree in a wooded area and took us to the spot where he'd harvested before to make a sassafras root liqueur.  We climbed over a lot (I mean a lot) of downed trees from last year's tornado, as well as some of the other violent storms we've had the past year, looking for the small saplings that sprout but die soon after since there's not enough light to sustain them, all the while tripping over tree branches.

I picked both leaves and pulled up sapling roots.  The leaves I left to dry overnight since they seemed very watery.  The roots I gently scrubbed clean and left to dry overnight.  Then they were carefully cut up with my garden clippers as a knife didn't seem to do it.  They've been sitting in vodka for over a week now and I think I'll leave it a bit longer.  So far it smells earthy, licorice-y and definitely has notes of root beer.  The leaf I filtered the next day.  It's incredibly dark and viscous, I can't even see through the bottle.  I filtered it six days ago and there's no sediment and it hasn't clarified at all.  It tastes really nice, tho, and very different from the root.  I'm thinking sassafras and soda's in the garden this summer.

The best recent discovery was the sweet woodruff in the herb garden, but that's another story for later.

May Day Violets

When I was a child my mother smelled of violets.  She wore Yardley April Violets and when Yardley stopped making it my father went on a mission to hunt down any remaining bottles.  As a compensation I always buy my mother violet scented things for her birthday, Christmas, Mother's Day, etc.  A few years ago Yardley made a limited edition and I was able to buy some for her for Christmas.  My mom is not an overly emotional woman but I think I saw her tear up.

Violets are a funny little plant.  The violets native to this area are lovely but have no discernable fragrance.  If you're lucky enough to find a patch of viola odorata, the sweetly scented violet, you can have one good whiff before the ionones in the plant will knock out your sense of smell for a while.  Another funny thing about the violet is that the pretty purple "flower" they send up in the spring is really not the plant's true flower at all.  The true flower with all the sexual parts comes up late in the summer.  They're white and form at the base of the plant and are loaded with seeds.  The purple flower in the spring is just for show!

Violet leaves, with their heart shape, are nice to nibble on in the spring in a salad, as well as the non-sexual flowers.  A salad dotted with violets is a lovely thing indeed.  Violet leaves are mucilaginous meaning that they coat and soothe tissues when taken internally.  They are also known to break up cysts and masses, particular to the breast.  I usually harvest leaves late in the summer just before the true flower comes out and leave them to dry for tisane.

My mom and her best friend, Pat Harvey, used to pick them when they were neighbors on the same street when they were young mothers back in the '50's.  I got to sit next to Pat at a wedding this past weekend and reminded her of this.  So this post is for my mom and her best friend, Happy May Day!

New Perfume Workshop Announced at New York Botanical Garden

I'm so pleased that I'll be participating in the New York Botanical Garden's Adult Education program this Spring and Summer.  I'll be teaching two classes, Natural Perfume Blending on Saturday, May 19th and Aromatherapy 101 on Thursday, June 7th.

New Flavors for Vodka

Every so often I get inspired to make some new cocktail fixings.  I thought that before the winter's bounty of citrus fruits were over and done I should try infusing some zest and see what I could come up with.  Meyer lemon was the first venture.  It's a lighter and fresher version of a regular old lemon, much more perfumed.  It probably won't hold up to stronger mixers but I think it would be lovely with tonic or club soda.  From there I made pink grapefruit and minneola tangerine.  I'm imagining paring some of these with vanilla for some interesting creamsicle variations.

horseradish root

Also had the good fortune of being present when the horseradish roots were being dug up in my community garden.  I've always thought horseradish vodka was a natural, being halfway to a Bloody Mary already.  My specimen was long and thin and fairly easy to clean so I opted out of peeling and just chopped it up.  I used about two and a half tablespoons of chopped fresh horseradish to one cup of vodka and let it sit for just a day before straining.  I also made a batch with a teaspoon of crushed black peppercorns.  I'm so intrigued by the possibilities that I ended up buying another horseradish root and making more.  I have fresh tomato season in mind, so this second batch is being put away for safe keeping.