Bruidstranen - The Brides Tear’s

Posted by Chris on April 4, 2008

Joel of TravelBeat.Net went to Amsterdam and tried a few of the finer spirits there, including Bruidstranen, a spiced wine popular to newly weds and commonly served at weddings.

Joel sparked my interest in Bruidstranen so I looked a little further into it and found more explanation over at “Dutch recipes for the newly weds.”

This alcoholic drink is especially for weddings although it has a strange name: Tears of the Bride. The gold and silver leaves mean: the smell of roses and moonshine. It has a scent so fine, that it is comparable with the finest perfume. This drink is served at the wedding (or, as the rumour goes: when a woman is not amused with something her husband did, she poors him a glass to remind him of the weddingfauls). It can also be a gift from the married couple to their guests.

…and, what do you know? They also have a recipe for mulled wine (”Hypocras”) there Here’s the recipe. They have some interesting history about it too but you will have to visit them for that:

Hypocras - mulled wine

500 grams / 2lb 2oz. Sugar
2 lemons
2 tsp cinnamon
4 cloves
2 pieces of mace
6 white pepper corns
1 tsp coriander
5 oranges
1 tart apple such as �goudrenet�
� liter / 2 cups / 1 pint milk
2 litres / 2 qts red or white wine

Splice the cloves lengthwise and crush the pepper corns. Squeeze the two lemons and keep the juice. Dice the unpeeled, non-cored apple. Peel the oranges and keep the peels.

Mix juice, spices, peels, milk and wine in a large container and set aside to steep for at least a day, preferably longer.

Soak a large piece of cheesecloth or a good quality tea towel to use as a sieve. Put that (perhaps supported by a metal sieve or clander) over a wide-mouthed container or bottle able eventually to hold 2.5 litres (a gallon), or use smaller containers and pour the contents through a funnel into a larger one.

Enjoy!