For centuries, humans have leaned into ritualistic practices using certain ingredients in spells and manifestations. This is a rich world with many different examples of what each ingredient stands for, but here are some background stories for the ones you’ll commonly find as tasting notes in wine. This will now be the glossary for all wine spell tasting notes to go with my Uncorking Magic series. Enjoy!
Black olive: There’s an ancient evil eye or ‘Malocchio’ tradition among Southern Italians, Greeks and the Maltese where olive oil is dropped into a bowl of water. If the drops spread or merge, the evil eye is on you. If this happens, prayers are said and the water is thrown away to lift it.
Black pepper for healing and banishment: Pepper is hot and has been used by healers across time to burn out illness. Also, a sniff makes you sneeze, which folklore says expels spirits from the body.
Brambles for healing: An ancient healing ritual from southwest England and parts of Wales and Ireland involves patients crawling through, or being passed through, an arch of brambles several times to leave illnesses such as whooping cough, boils or rheumatism behind on the thorns. Later, this also included healing the heart.
Crystal sound to drive evil away: Ringing bells are among the oldest protective tools in Europe and are strongly associated with this time of year to scare evil spirits away.
Leather vs evil spirits: In 17th and 18th-century England, people hid well-worn shoes in walls and chimneys across the country to trap evil spirits. As a leather shoe takes the shape of its wearer, people thought it held something of their spirit and could act as a decoy. Thousands of old shoes have been found in building renovations since!
Plum for resilience: In Western European folk magic, people kept pieces of smoothed plum wood as pocket charms or whittled them into wands for resilience. The plum tree itself is incredibly resilient and can bloom through severe late-winter frosts, so people believed its wood had a shielding property against curses and sickness.
Sage for wisdom and clearing energies: ‘Smudging’, i.e. burning white sage to clear stagnant energy, is well known in modern spiritual and wellness circles. European sage is also known as a natural antiseptic and is still used to cleanse wounds and support digestion. It’s also long associated with memory and, therefore, wisdom, hence ‘sage’ meaning ‘wise’.
Salt for purification: Before refrigeration, salt was the best way to preserve meat and fish, so it became seen as the enemy of decay as well as corruption because it stays pure and unchanged over time.
Smoked meat for purification: In Celtic traditions during Beltane, people drove cattle between two bonfires to cleanse them of disease and evil spirits before summer. Then at Samhain, those not fit enough to survive winter were slaughtered, salted and smoked to preserve their meat.
Strawberry for protection and nourishment: In an old, rural Bavarian tradition, people tie baskets of wild strawberries to cattle horns as gifts for the elves, who in turn protect the herd and its milk. Nourishment for nourishment.
Violet for letting go: Victorian widows would switch from black to violet-coloured clothing as they began to publicly let go of their grief.