Herbs · booze · winter aches
BruiseClub
Two bottles. One you drink, one you rub on.
A dark Saturday in December spent crushing herbs into high-proof alcohol, drinking something warm and slightly medicinal, and making the jar that gets you through the rest of winter.
Fire Over Water · Upper West Side
Rose & Hawthorn
山楂玫瑰
Drink this one ♡
Fire Over Water · Upper West Side
Die Da Jow
跌打酒
Absolutely do not drink this one
↑ Put your name on them
The premise
Chinese medicine has been putting herbs
in alcohol for about two thousand years.
Sometimes to drink. Sometimes to rub on the thing that seizes up the moment it gets cold. Cold weather makes old injuries louder — stiff necks, aching knees, the shoulder that only complains in December. This is the jar for that.
Bottle one
Rose & hawthorn cordial
Hawthorn berry (shān zhā) and rose bud (méi guī huā) — two of the prettiest things in the pharmacy and, not coincidentally, two that Chinese medicine has always associated with the heart.
Served warm and spiced, because it’s December — or without the alcohol if you’d rather. You’ll take a mini home.
Bottle two
Die da jow
“Hit-fall wine.” The jar every kung fu school kept by the door and mostly wouldn’t let you look inside. Six warming herbs, high-proof alcohol, six weeks in the dark — made for exactly the kind of ache that shows up in winter.
This is the one you rub on. It is not a beverage and it will taste like regret. Yours is ready the end of January.
How the afternoon goes
Ninety minutes.
Drink in hand, grievance on a card
Everyone writes down one thing that’s been bothering them. The neck that locks up in the cold. The knee on the stairs. The shoulder that only hurts in winter. It matters later.
Build your batch
Weigh, crush, layer, pour, seal. Amber bottles, gold wax, your name on the label in your own handwriting. Wear something you don’t mind staining — safflower does not forgive.
Christine works the room
While the bottles sit, she comes around with your card and gets her hands on the winter ache you wrote down. A few minutes each. You leave knowing what’s actually going on in there, which is more than most people get in a year.
The corner with the machines
Microcurrent and red light, set up and humming. Park the sore part under it, refill your glass, see what you think.
Toast, photos, go
You leave holding two bottles and a jar. Everyone takes a picture. It’s a very good picture.
In the liniment
Six herbs, no secrets.
红花
Hóng huā · Safflower
The one that turns the whole jar red. Backbone of every bruise formula ever written.
当归
Dāng guī · Angelica
Sweet, resiny, unmistakable. Chinese medicine’s most famous women’s herb, moonlighting.
三七
Sān qī · Notoginseng
Carried by soldiers for centuries. Still what Chinese athletes reach for after a hard landing.
乳香
Rǔ xiāng · Frankincense
Yes, that frankincense. In this tradition it was a liniment herb long before it was a church one.
没药
Mò yào · Myrrh
Frankincense’s other half. The two are almost never written into a formula apart.
桃仁
Táo rén · Peach kernel
A bitter little seed that looks like an almond and is in nearly every classical version of this recipe.
Coming home with you
Two bottles and a jar.
Your liniment
Four ounces, sealed, dated, wearing your handwriting. Put it somewhere dark and forget about it — it’s ready end of January, right when winter is at its worst.
A mini of the cordial
Because six weeks is a long time to wait for a bottle you’re not even allowed to drink.
A jar of the aged batch
Last year’s liniment, fully steeped, so you have something to use tonight — plus a card with what Christine found.
- When
- Sat 12 Dec
5:00 – 6:30 - Where
- 125 W 72nd St
Suite 3F - How many
- Ten
and that’s it - How much
- $55
$95 for two
Come make
something pretty.
Bring the winter
ache.
Ten spots, and half usually go to people who already come here. Your $55 comes off your first visit if you decide you want one — and it’s completely fine if you don’t.
Save me a spotQuestions