Wine and healing

by Susun Weed | Apr 24, 2007 | Columns, Wise Woman Ways | 0 comments

Hi Susun,
I’ve been working on building up my health with daily stinging nettles infusions and have noticed a tremendous difference in how I feel. My post menopausal symptoms are greatly reduced and although I struggle with MCS, I’m feeling stronger. I’m wondering how you feel about an occasional glass of wine. And would organic be the preference.

Karen Joy’s response (apprentice to Susun Weed):
This is so wonderful you are nourishing yourself with nettles, and feeling your strength! Fermented beverages can be quite health promoting, when of quality and modest amount. This is individual however. I trust you to judge whether appropriate for you. Susun and I both favor the homemade wines, with cultures grabbed locally to ferment the juices. They are even better when prepared with local herbs, like Dandelion Wine (see below) or Elderflower champagne.

If buying wines I personally favor the organic moreso for the care of the earth than the worry of how my small amounts will affect me. With MCS I would take an alcoholic beverage cautiously, monitoring myself, and yes, then would favor organic.

If drinking homemade wines you actually help populate your intestines with good flora, increasing your quality of digestion. For some this then helps to lessen allergic type responses.

love and blessings, Karen Joy
(apprentice to Susun Weed)

Dandelion Wine à la Laughing Rock
Our year’s supply for rituals and medicine

2 gallon / 8 liter crock
3-5 quarts / 3-5 liters blossoms
5 quarts / 5 liters water
***
3 pounds / 1.5 kg sugar
1 organic orange
1 organic lemon
***
1 pkg/8 grams live yeast whole wheat bread toast

directions
Find a field of dandelions in bloom on a glorious shining day. Follow the honeybees to the finest flowers. Pick them with a sweeping motion of your parted fingers, like a comb. I leave the green sepals on, but get rid of all stalks.

Back home, put blossoms immediately into a large ceramic, glass, or plastic vessel. Boil water; pour over flowers. Cover your crock with cheesecloth. Stir daily for three days. On the fourth day, strain blossoms from liquid.

Cook liquid with sugar and rind of citrus (omit rind if not organic) for 30-60 minutes. Return to crock. Add citrus juice. When liquid has cooled to blood temperature, soften yeast, spread on toast, and float toast in crock. Cover and let work two days. Strain.

Return liquid to crock for one more day to settle. Filter into very clean bottles and cork lightly. Don’t drink until winter solstice.

Preparation time: A week’s worth of effort yields a drink not only delightful but good for your liver, as well.

excerpted from Healing Wise, pages 151

Author

Susun Weed

Susun S. Weed has no official diplomas of any kind; she left high school in her junior year to pursue studies in mathematics and artificial intelligence at UCLA and she left college in her junior year to pursue life.

Susun began studying herbal medicine in 1965 when she was living in Manhattan while pregnant with her daughter, Justine Adelaide Swede.

She wrote her first book -- Wise Woman Herbal for the Childbearing Year (now in its 30th printing) -- in 1985 and published it as the first title of Ash Tree Publishing in 1986.

It was followed by Healing Wise (1989), New Menopausal Years the Wise Woman Way (1992 and revised in 2002), Breast Cancer? Breast Health! The Wise Woman Way (1996), Down There: Sexual and Reproductive Health the Wise Woman Way (2011), Abundantly Well - Seven Medicines (2019).

In addition to her writing, Ms Weed trains apprentices, oversees the work of more than 300 correspondence course students, coordinates the activities of the Wise Woman Center, and is a High Priestess of Dianic Wicca, a member of the Sisterhood of the Shields, and a Peace Elder.

Susun Weed is a contributor to the Routledge International Encyclopedia of Women's Studies, peer- reviewed journals, and popular magazines, including a regular column in Sagewoman.

Her worldwide teaching schedule encompasses herbal medicine, ethnobotany, pharmacognosy, psychology of healing, ecoherbalism, nutrition, and women's health issues and her venues include medical schools, hospital wellness centers, breast cancer centers, midwifery schools, naturopathic colleges, and shamanic training centers, as well as many conferences.

Susun appears on many television and radio shows, including National Public Radio and NBC News.
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