Ratifia

Ratifia (“ra-ti-FEE-a”), an almond-scented wine fortified with sweet wine and sugar, spans Charleston’s three centuries of imbibing. Although it’s all but vanished from Lowcountry tables, the Charleston Museum has a bottle of ratifia that was made in the 1880s and rebottled and corked in the 1950s.

This version of ratifia (also called ratafia or noyau) is flavored with the kernels of peaches; it comes from my earliest Carolina source, Eliza Lucas Pinckney, who recorded it in