Q: What is flower wine?
A: Wine made from flowers—not grapes.
Flower wine history dates from Ancient Egypt, Greece, and Rome, where the earliest vintners would often add the flowers of herbs like lavender to grape wine to enhance flavor and vitality.
The first record of a true flower wine, made from chrysanthemums, comes from Ancient China's Han Dynasty, nearly 2000 years ago. Regarded to this day as an "auspicious wine," it's the celebratory beverage of choice at the country’s annual Double Ninth Festival.
Korean legend tells the tale of a wizard on a mountaintop who gifted King Taejo’s high court a life-giving azalea-petal wine. Flower wines from honeysuckle, peach, and maesil blossoms are still popular in South Korea today.
In Western lore, references to wine derived from the flowers of lavender, clove pink (aka sops-in-wine), and valerian (not to be confused with “Valyrian Steel”) appear in the works of Shakespeare, Chaucer, and Spenser, who deliriously exclaims in The Shepheardes Calender: "Bring Coronations, and Sops in wine, worne of Paramoures."
DIY winemakers in Europe and Colonial America crafted homespun garden wines from dandelions, elderflowers, gilliflowers, roses, and countless varietal blends. Since these winemakers were mostly women, and the ingredients for their wine did not come from the vines of lordly estates, their recipes were not given the same prestige as that of the noble grapes -- until now.
