It’s the time of year when carolers might “come a wassailing,” perhaps singing that very song of merriment.
But what exactly is wassailing anyway?
Fortunately, Lauretta Weaver, a local jelly maker with a working knowledge of the old-time, spiced holiday drink known as wassail, doesn’t mind explaining.
“If you were going wassailing, you would fix up this drink that has a lot of juices — apple juice, lemon juice, orange juice and/or pineapple juice — in it. Some people add different spices. There’s been a lot of different recipes down through the times, and people have used basically whatever they’ve got,” Weaver said.
“When they went wassailing, they would take their drink and go out to their orchard and pour wassail around their favorite tree, maybe their best apple tree. Wassail was also served to the carolers if they came around. The mixture of all that stuff was good for you, and they would toast to good health with a hot, spiced drink before going on to the next house.”
For years, Weaver has been making the drink that inspired the Christmas carol during the holidays. That led to her developing a wassail jelly recipe that’s now being commercially produced.
“I had read several books in which the early Americans who came over from England drank wassail. I started wondering what (it tasted like), so I made some. Then I started making and serving it for Christmas,” she said. “One day, my momma said, ‘Why don’t you make some jelly from this?’ Each time the wassail smell filled the house, memories of her saying that would come to my mind.”
Her product, Circle W Farmhouse Wassail Jelly, was developed and perfected here in Gilmer County, where Weaver and her husband, Randy, have lived the past 20 years.
“My husband’s dad was born and raised in the Bucktown area, but my husband was born in Canton. We visited back and forth here all the time over the years, and we’d bring (my father-in-law) back up here to visit,” she said.
After Weaver started experimenting with recipes for the jelly, she eventually found the perfect mix of juices and spices for its unique, fruity flavor. But then the gelling process wouldn’t take. She kept trying and tinkering until finally getting the mixture just right to congeal.
“This combination of many juices makes it hard to gel, but if you can ever get it to gel, you’ve got a good jelly. It’s delicious, and it’s not like any other jelly I’ve ever tasted,” she said.
After obtaining a cottage food license through the University of Georgia, Weaver discovered she would have to find a commercial kitchen to produce the jelly as a product that could be sold in stores.
“The rules state that anyone with a cottage food license can only sell their product face to face with the end consumer,” she said.
She credits her husband for finding the commercial producer, Das Jam Haus, of Tennessee. The jelly is now sold by select merchants in Gilmer, Pickens and Fannin County, she noted.
Although the taste of the wassail mixture (which includes cloves and cinnamon along with the various juices) is satisfying, the smell of it cooking is perhaps just as pleasing, Weaver noted.
“It makes the whole house smell absolutely wonderful, like Christmas,” she said.
Weaver grew up in the Keithsburg community, between Canton and Ball Ground, in what she said was a “pretty self sufficient” household. Her upbringing later influenced her jelly making.
“We actually made our own jellies and other things when I was a child. I learned a few things from my momma. Then, as years passed on by, I started making wassail every year at Christmas,” she said.
Although Weaver has also done well in making other jellies like apple and blackberry, she’s content to market just the wassail flavor, at least for now.
“There’s a lot of things you have to go through just to get one jelly out there, but I’ve had a lot of good feedback on it. We have it in pretty close to 20 places now. There’s also a candy store down in Roswell that uses the wassail flavor from our jelly in some of their chocolates,” she said.
Black Bear Antiques, CC’s Seafood and More, Valero convenience store and Mountaintown Antiques are among the Gilmer merchants that stock the jelly, for which Weaver has perhaps found the perfect tagline.
“It’s not just for Christmas anymore. It can be served all year-round,” she said.