A shrub is a delectable combination of fruit, herbs, vinegar and sugar, which forms a concentrate with which you can do many tasty things.

The specific origins of the switchel, a haymaker’s drink, are fuzzy but the drink, itself, is anything but that.

Allium ursinum, also known as wild garlic, wild ramsons, bear garlic, onion stinkers or devil’s posy (depending on the extent of your fondness for allium family herbs) is an abundant and delicious herb.

This stuff is a little addictive, but in a good way. It is great as a pasta sauce, on pizzas, mixed into a bean stew, a chilli or a bolognaise.

Making herbal vinegars is a deeply satisfying process. They have been used therapeutically throughout the history of medicine-making because vinegar is a good living solvent and extracts many herbal constituents effectively.

I make Christmas herb vinegar around the same time I make our Christmas fruit cake. We will consume the vinegar ourselves and we also give some away as Christmas presents.

I have been tinkering with this vinegar for a little while now. In formulating this recipe, I had the delicate structures of the lungs and the blood vessels and capillaries that serve them very much in mind.