Colonial Sage Wine Sage was commonly mixed with ale or wine to make a restorative brew. Both Parkinson and his contemporary John Gerard, author of The Herbal, or General History of Plants, included a recipe for sage ale. The practice of brewing beverages with sage continued into U. S. colonial times. Martha Washington's Booke of Cookery has a recipe for a health cordial that included sage. The late eighteenth century hand-written receipt book of Guilelma, wife of William Penn, founder of Pennsylvania, had this recipe for sage wine: "Take 25 quarts of spring water and boil it and let it stand till it is a little more then blood warm. Take 25 pound raisons, clean picked and shred and 1/2 a bushel of the best red sage and so shred it also. Then put the fruit and sage into warm water. Then take a pint of ale yeast and put thereto, and cover it warm and let it stand 7 days stirring it once a day. "Then strain it and put it into a small cask. Let it stand a week or more then put to it a quart of malig sack [a type of white wine], bottle it putting a little sugar in each bottle. I think it the best way to put the sack in the bottles and so to fill them up with sage wine. It may bee drunk in a month or 6 weeks but it will keep good a year in this manner. You may make cowslip wine [in the same manner] only allow a bushel of cowslips instead of 1/3 a bushel of sage."