Melissa Leaf Tincture

Crush a lemon balm leaf between two fingers and the plant's mint-family scent turns unmistakably citrus, sharp and clean. The leaf itself is crinkled and faintly downy, deep green fading to yellow toward the older growth. This tincture is made fresh, leaf picked and processed the same day, and it holds that lemon top note remarkably well for something bottled in alcohol. The Greeks named the plant for the bee, melissa, drawn to its flowers in such numbers that beekeepers once rubbed the leaf inside empty hives to invite a swarm to settle. Monastery gardens across medieval Europe kept it close at hand, and the leaf has long been given to ease a tense stomach and settle a restless mood. We cut the leaf at flowering, when its essential oil content peaks, and macerate it fresh rather than dried — dried lemon balm loses much of what makes it worth taking in the first place. The result is extracted in a fifty percent cane alcohol, bright and true to the growing plant. Fifteen to thirty drops in water after a meal, or before bed if the stomach is what's keeping the mind busy. An easy, unfussy ally for anyone whose nerves tend to settle in the gut before anywhere else.