Ingredients
2-3 elderflower heads
Handful of fresh rose petals
3-4 sprigs of lemon balm
1 bottle of white wine
Mason jar with lid
(lemon verbena, tulsi or pineapple sage, any fruity herbs would also work really well if you wanted to add those in!)
Gently rinse all your herbs under cool running water. You can also shake them off to get rid of any bugs or dirt that might be caught between the leaves or stems. Take your elderflowers and remove all the stems. This might be a little time consuming but the stems and twigs contain a mild amount of toxins. It might cause a slight stomach upset if you leave them in, so I suggest you separate the flowers from the stems or as much of them as you can. Use flowers that have fully opened but are still bright creamy white without any brown spots or blemishes.
Once your herbs are clean, gently dry them off with a clean towel. Put all the herbs into your jar and top with wine. Chill the wine in the fridge overnight. You can leave the wine for 3-4 for maximum flavor but if you want to drink it the next day you definitely can! The longer you leave it, the more flavor it will impart.
BONUS RECIPE
There are plenty of recipes out there for elderflower cordials and syrups, so if you wanted you could even turn this into a frozen wine! If you saw my post from last year, you will see the magical flower confetti frozen wine I did, and you can easily turn this infused wine into a frozen slushy!
Instead of infusing the herbs directly into the wine, you will first make a syrup with the herbs then pour into the wine when its cool. I came up with the infused wine recipe because I don't really like adding sugar to drinks in general and sweet wine just isn't for me, but the sugar helps this wine recipe stay slushy and will give it that lovely herb flavor.
Syrup Ingredients
1/2 cup sugar
1/2 cup water
3-4 heads of elderflower
Handful of lemon balm
Handful of rose petals
Frozen Wine Ingredients
1 bottle white wine or rose
Juice of 1/2 a lemon
1/4 cup of infused syrup
Bring the water and sugar to a boil. Let it simmer for 5 minutes until it begins to thicken slightly. Turn the heat off and add the flowers and herbs. Cover the pot with a lid and let the herbs steep for 30 minutes. Strain the herbs out and let the syrup cool.
In a shallow baking pan, pour in a bottle of white wine. Put it in the freezer for about 3-4 hours until it's nearly frozen. Once the wine is frozen, scrape into a blender along with the infused syrup and lemon juice. Blend until slushy.
You can drink it just like this, but it will melt pretty quickly from being in the blender, so for the perfect consistency, place it back into the freezer for another 30 minutes. Scoop into glasses and top with some of your rose petals and elderflower and enjoy!
