Epona
Recipe Anno 1870-1910
Epona eau-de-vie is made from ripe, sweet strawberries picked from local growers in the Waasland. The region, “the Sweet Land of Waas”, is well known for its fertile soils and the high quality of its agricultural products.
Epona was a Celtic goddess of fertility during the Roman period. She was worshipped by the Menapians, who lived in our fertile region at that time. It is for this reason that Sas Distilleries chose the name Epona for the strawberry eau-de-vie.
Old manuscripts show that during the Middle Ages, French and Swiss monks were already distilling "eau-de-vie", which literally translates to “water of life”. Eau-de-vie can be made from many types of fruit, but a quality strawberry eau-de-vie is not easy to create. The recipe from Sas Distilleries is based on texts from the 19th and early 20th centuries.
In the first step, we process and ferment the well-ripened Sonata and Elsanta strawberries into strawberry wine. For fermentation, we use a carefully selected yeast. This yeast converts the fermentable sugars from the strawberries into alcohol. After fermentation, the resulting strawberry wine is gently distilled into a delightful strawberry perfume. More than 3 kg of strawberries are needed for each 350 ml bottle.
