Well today's the day.
Today I finally tie the knot,
and to celebrate we're going to make a wedding sip.
We'll also look at some of the world's more interesting wedding traditions,
this time on Drinking History.
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Now in the 19th century the thing to have at your wedding was a big bowl of wedding punch,
but what happens if you have no friends,
or you know it's just a couple or maybe four of you at the wedding?
Well in 1900 in the '20th Century Guide' by James C. Maloney,
he gives you the option to make a wedding sip which is what we're making today.
Perfect if you are having just two or maybe four people at your wedding.
Pre-portioned just like the meals from our sponsor Hellofresh.
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Now let's get sippin because it's called a wedding sip.
First you'll need a mixing glass with some ice and then one teaspoon of one to one simple syrup.
You can also just use sugar.
Then one teaspoon of pineapple syrup. I am using Small Hands Foods pineapple gum syrup and
that gum is going to give you an extra smoothness to the drink.
Then a teaspoon of lemon juice.
Now for the liquors he mentions everything in wine glasses and pony glasses which can
be quite confusing because they weren't actually entirely standard but typically
a wine glass is two ounces or a large jigger, and a pony glass was one ounce.
So he actually calls for
half wine glass, or one jigger or one ounce rather, and a half pony glass or a half an ounce.
So I'm going to pour one ounce of port wine it's called Taylor Flatgate. It's very good it's not like
top drawer but you don't want to use anything that's too top drawer because
you're going to be mixing this with a lot of other things. So don't go break the bank on this.
This is very reasonable. Then we're going to do an ounce of Catawba wine.
Now most people including myself until very recently had never even heard of Catawba wine,
and that's odd because it used be the most planted wine grape in America
throughout most of the 19th century.
It's really, really hard to find today. There are only a handful of wineries that still use it but
Stone Hill Winery which is located in Missouri has actually been making Catawba wine for over a century, and when
this recipe was written they were the number two wine producer in the country.
So I'll put a link in the description to where you can get this if you want to try it out.
So I'm going to add an ounce but then I'm also going to drink a little bit
myself just to see what it's like, you know.
Cheers!
Well that is just refreshing as all get out.
This is really- this is a summer wine if ever I found one.
You know I thought it was going to be very sweet, it's not and they used to call this wine
dry Catawba.
Dry meant something quite
different than- dry was actually much sweeter than it is today.
Which is why now we have like extra dry champagne and everything like that.
It's not super sweet. I mean it's not like a white Zinfandel it's much-
it's smooth. It's wonderful.
Yeah I could drink a glass of that.
Now he also calls for a half pony glass which is going to be
about a half ounce of Jamaica rum and Abricotine mixed.
I don't know why he didn't just say a quarter of each but that's how he wrote it,
and for the Jamaica rum I am using Smith and Cross
which is a wonderful navy strength rum. It's absolutely fantastic. It has like-
it's really complex. It's got some bite to it because it is navy strength so it's very, very alcoholic.
We'll actually do a whole episode on what navy strength actually means and where it came from, but it has
like these wonderful dark kind of leathery notes to it that I really, really love. So
we'll pour
a quarter of an ounce of that and Abricotine. Abricotine at this time was a
aperitif made in Switzerland and basically it was apricot brandy.
Hard to find that exact thing now so you can get apricot brandy here in the US
right here, and I'll put a link to both of these in the description as well from Curiada.
They sell all sorts of wonderful liquors that sometimes are kind of hard to find in your
average liquor store, but they deliver to most of the country. They're fantastic. So...
we'll add that.
Then stir it up and then add a few berries
and then we'll strain this puppy into a glass.
And it calls for you to top it off with just a bit of seltzer
and here we are the wedding sip.
Let's give it a shot.
*Sips in Married Man
That's the weirdest tasting thing I've ever-
That is a weird cocktail. It's not bad, <_<
it's just really weird, and I thought it would be weird because
what an odd assortment of ingredients we've put into this glass.
The only thing I can like really pick out
is the pineapple syrup.
I can tell that that is there.
Everything else is pretty well blended, I guess.
It has a steeliness to it that is super, super clean. It just like
cuts into your palette.
It's not sweet.
I thought it would be sweeter than it is, it's not sweet. It's not
very- it doesn't feel alcoholic. Honestly this is a very, very dangerous cocktail because-
*Sips Dangerous Cocktail
there is nothing in there that would make me even think that there was alcohol in this.
So let's raise a toast not to my wedding at this point but to the weird wedding traditions of the world.
So the number one weird wedding tradition is crying before weddings in China.
During the Warring States period the princess of the Zhao state was wed to the leader of the Yan state
and it's said that the princess's mother was so distraught at her daughter leaving that she wept at her feet.
And that makes sense but traditions do as traditions do and this one evolved quite a bit
so that today the Tujia people often start with the bride crying. Weeping for an hour a day.
A full month before her wedding day. Now a week into that the mother will join her in weeping
and then a week after that the grandmother, and finally the sisters and aunts and all of the women of the family
spend an hour weeping on on the way leading up to her wedding.
And I'm not going to lie, I'm pretty sure that my mom has been doing this for the past few weeks.
Number two is called the blackening of the bride. See in parts of Scotland, mostly rural Scotland,
the bride and groom are playfully kidnapped by friends and family and
covered with things to make them disgusting.
It could be molasses or rotten eggs, fish guts, or curdled milk.
In the 19th century it was often the soot from chimneys and there are even stories of people using tar.
Now this was supposed to finish up with all the friends and family then washing the bride and groom,
and it actually probably started just with washing. A washing of the feet
but at some point someone said well your feet actually aren't that dirty so let me go get some fish guts.
Number three is back to China with the shooting of the bride.
See the Uyghur people will often celebrate by having the bride get shot
with arrows by the new husband three times. Luckily the arrows do not have
arrow heads on them so it's probably just more annoying than actually painful, but
still interesting.
So he shoots three arrows, then goes and picks them up, breaks them and the bow
and this is supposed to symbolize a long-lasting marriage.
Number four is bridesmaids and the best man and I can hear you right now well that's not weird at all,
I had bridesmaids or I had a best man at my wedding, and no it's not weird until you realize why they're supposed to be there.
See bridesmaids were originally dressed exactly like the bride and used basically as decoys either
to fool malevolent spirits or more practically robbers, because the bride would often actually
carry the dowry or like a bunch of money with her to the wedding and exchange it during part of the ceremony.
And then when it comes to the best man he was supposed to be the best man with a sword,
because he was there to guard the ceremony to make sure that it didn't get disrupted,
and to stop the bride from running off, if you know she wasn't that into it.
This guard duty then often extended to the actual wedding night,
and my brother who's gonna be my best man has been practicing his sword skills so I'm getting a little worried.
And number five is la soup from France and this is definitely
the most disgusting one.
At some French weddings the guests would get together at the end of the evening and pool all of their leftovers
into la soup and then feed it to the happy couple
in a toilet or older in a chamber pot, and more recently they've they've removed the leftovers
and started using chocolate and champagne, but they're sticking with the toilet concept.
So that's weird.
And I hate that that's now what's going to be in my mind as I finish my wedding sip.
Oh well.
So thank you again for watching. Wish me luck
at my wedding later today, or if you're watching this later than
a few days ago, or whenever you're watching it.
And I will see you next time on Drinking History.
*Sip