I made a silly mistake yesterday and wandered into one of the local junk/antique shops. I am sure there are a few of you out there who won’t be asking why that was silly though 😉
Wolfe’s Aromatic Schnapps.
In my wanders I found a lovely, four-sided, light green bottle embossed with AROMATIC SCHNAPPS and immediately decided the other old bottles on my bathroom window ledge needed a new friend.
Once I bought it home I dumped it in a bath of bicarb, vinegar and washing liquid (thanks to EllaDee for that recipe) and left it for the night.
This morning instead of spending time doing the far more recently dirty dishes I should have been attending to, I was bent over the laundry sink with pipe cleaners and a chopstick scraping the gunk out of it.
After using my best pipe cleaner bending techniques I now have a bottle which looks deserving of a nice spot on the ledge, instead of something that probably should have been left in the hole it was dug out of….
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Border Watch 14 Dec 1895 http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article78846158
Whenever I add a new bottle to my collection I try to find a newspaper article advertising the miracles its contents may have once imparted.
A bit of archive searching last night made me think that a braver person might have kept all those icky bottle scrapings and made up some sort of tonic.
Wolfe’s Schiedam Aromatic Schnapps was a mixture of gin and Juniper berries but, apparently, that innocent sounding recipe was likely to cure you of anything that might be wrong with you, I can’t believe that it isn’t still available in every shop! 😉
I wonder though, was there a secret ingredient in the bottle, or was the secret just the more obvious one of swigging down gin every time you felt a bit bad making you forget your troubles?
That warm glow that followed probably led to the drinker believing they were being cure of what ailed them!
Euroa Advertiser 2 Aug 1895 http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article65521925
