— And Wines
What a large number of local wines, so to call them, have disappeared from the cottages and farm-houses! One of the most popular was a drink made of the Yarrow, or Milfoil, a plant that is very common in all counties. Has anyone got the old recipe? Elder flower, as well as elderberry wine, was made on many farms not least, so far as my experience goes, in Oxfordshire and Berkshire. One dark autumn evening I saw an old man come to the door with a parcel under each arm. He had brought as a gift two bottles of wine that he had made in the cottage forty years earlier ; one was currant wine, the other mead. The mead was of its sort excellent, for the old man was a great specialist of honey, and almost the only other ingredient was brandy. Of the currant wine the less said the better. It may have been excellent in its youth. Gooseberry wine was always made in quantity in one midland farmhouse with which I was very familiar. The farmer and his wife, who seemed to live in the direst poverty, bought large farms for both their sons. Do they carry on the gooseberry tradition?
W. BEACH THOMAS.
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