Hibiscus Wine
I keep a sharp hear for stories of unusual beverages. I tried most of the ersatz coffees—okra seed, parched peanut, acorn, smoked gum. The teas are things that are multivarious, complicated, and surprising in their effects. I’ve had most of the herb teas from non-poisonous plants, and even a few “medicinals” that were verging on unembarrassed toxicity. But wines are among the more interesting things to sample. When you get away from the Vinus vinifera varieties that stock the store shelves, you fine many curious things made into alcoholic “wines.” I’ve tasted all the berry wines, dandelion wine, orange iwne, peach wine, and some very weird native plum wines that seemed like Klingon intoxicants. But the most curious in terms of their flavors and their myths are the blossom wines.
Hibiscus wine has a strange variety of names. In Jamaica it’s called sorrel wine. In Trinidad I had a small glass of Roselle wine. In Georgia a patent remedy doctor advertised 2 decades after the Civil War “cotton rose” wine. All are versions of hibiscus wine.
Its always made from the dried blossoms. The insipid end of the wine has 2oz dried blossoms per gallon. 4 oz. per gallon has more presence. Wimps put in elderflowers or dried elderberries. But that is hipster taste. The true southern and West Indian medicinal had no admixed ingredients. The flowers themselves were so fat with medicinal chemistry, that you didn’t need tweeking to get the benefits. In Central America and South America there is no hesitancy about affirming the power of the wine to clear the fog in your thinking and the lethargy in your limbs.
About a decade ago Barroso & Sons Seniorita Maria Wine launched on the American market—a true central America hibiscus wine. Made in the Sonoma Valley, it was available in western states from 2013 onward, sold as the “Flor de Jamaica.” It is sold as an Hispanic cultural beverage. But curiously there is no mention of flavor, medicinal efficacy, or the legendary clarity of dreaming that it was supposed to stimulate. Sweetness was the only quality mentioned in connection with taste. But many things are sweet. And sweeter all the time. The true power of the hibiscus has not yet been revealed. .
Hibiscus lowers the blood pressure.