SALT Journal · Food & Culture

What Sorrel Actually Is

The African roots, Christmas ritual and Vincentian tradition behind one of the Caribbean's most distinctive drinks.

By SALT · Updated August 2026 · 7 minute read

Ask someone unfamiliar with the Caribbean what sorrel is, and there's a real chance they picture the wrong plant. In Europe and parts of the United States, sorrel usually means a sharp, lemony leaf, closer to spinach, used in soups and sauces. In Saint Vincent & the Grenadines, and across the Caribbean, it means something else entirely: a deep crimson infusion that turns water the color of stained glass, and quietly shapes what a Vincentian Christmas tastes like.

The Plant, Not the Leaf

The two have nothing to do with each other beyond a shared English name. Culinary sorrel, the leafy kind, is a member of the buckwheat family, prized in French and European kitchens for a tartness closer to citrus than herb. Caribbean sorrel comes from a hibiscus flower, specifically the calyx, the deep red casing left behind once the petals of Hibiscus sabdariffa drop away, dried or steeped fresh into a tea. One is a leaf. The other comes from a flower. Both happen to be called sorrel, and only one of them belongs on a Vincentian Christmas table.

A Drink With African Roots

Hibiscus sabdariffa isn't native to the Caribbean. Its deepest roots trace to Africa, where hibiscus drinks remain part of everyday food culture today, bissap in Senegal, sobolo in Ghana, zobo in Nigeria, each a version of the same tart, ruby-red infusion. Historians trace the plant's arrival in the Caribbean to the transatlantic slave trade, carried, along with the knowledge of how to prepare it, by enslaved Africans forced to make the crossing. Enslaved communities are believed to have been cultivating it in Jamaica as early as the 1700s. In its earliest years in the region, it wasn't a celebration drink at all, it was a folk remedy, used to cool the body and treat fevers, closer to medicine cabinet than Christmas table.

Adrian Miller, the food historian who has traced the drink's lineage through plantation-era records and Federal Writers' Project narratives, places it within a much larger family of what he calls "red drink" across the African diaspora. "It's essentially a nod to ancestral traditional red drinks that crossed the Atlantic during the Atlantic slave trade," he has said of the connection. "Then it became sorrel in Jamaica." The same plant, carried by the same history, now goes by different names depending on which side of an old trade route you were born on.

Nine Mornings and the Vincentian Christmas Table

Somewhere along the way, the remedy became the ritual, though the ritual most associated with Vincentian Christmas is its own, separate story, and a more recent one. Nine Mornings, Saint Vincent's early-morning countdown to Christmas, is where sorrel is most visible today. Even the Government of Saint Vincent and the Grenadines describes its origins as "clouded in some mystery," generally traced to the Catholic novena observed in the nine days before Christmas, when early services sent worshippers out into the streets and down to the sea for a swim before dawn. Despite the popular belief that the tradition dates to the era of slavery, the government's own account suggests it more likely began after emancipation, closer to the early twentieth century, a Vincentian invention in its own right, not a holdover from sorrel's much older arrival on the island.

By the time Nine Mornings became what it is today, sorrel had settled firmly into the season around it. Kingstown's Saturday market fills with sorrel concentrate alongside rum-soaked black cake through December, and on Christmas Day itself, families still come home from church to the same three things waiting on the table: ham, black cake, and a jug of sorrel, dark enough to look almost black in low light.

What Sorrel Actually Tastes Like

Sorrel starts tart, closer to cranberry than fruit punch, with a floral edge from the hibiscus and whatever warmth the kitchen adds next. Ginger pushes it sharp. Cinnamon and clove pull it toward Christmas itself. Sugar rounds off the acidity, and rum, or a longer ferment, gives it more weight. There's no single correct glass. Vincentian families make it differently, and most would insist theirs is the right way.

Is Sorrel Alcoholic?

Not necessarily. The everyday version, steeped, strained, sweetened, has none. Many households add a measure of rum or red wine for the holidays, and a properly fermented sorrel wine develops its own alcohol content naturally through the ferment itself. Worth asking before pouring a glass for a guest, or a child.

From Sorrel Drink to Sorrel Wine

There's no single, agreed taxonomy here. Sorrel varies household to household and island to island, some versions simply steeped and sweetened, others fortified with a splash of rum, others rested longer with raisins until they ferment properly into what's called sorrel wine. What ties every version together is the base: hibiscus, spice, sugar, time.

At Salt & Sorrel, it's served as sorrel wine specifically, poured into ceramic cups rather than mixed into a punch bowl, treated as a considered pour rather than a seasonal obligation. It's also why SALT serves it well outside December. A drink this tied to one specific week of the year rarely gets the attention it deserves the other fifty-one, and there's no real reason a flavor this good should only exist at Christmas. "It has notes of family, warmth, Christmas and of being around people that you love," says Jamaican chef Suzanne Rousseau, co-author of Provisions: The Roots of Caribbean Cooking, of what a good sorrel actually tastes like. Those notes don't expire on December 26th.

Tasting Sorrel in Saint Vincent

Visitors who encounter sorrel at a hotel breakfast may meet it first as a bottled concentrate, sweet, one-note, a long way from what's actually poured at a Vincentian table in December. Salt & Sorrel exists to close that gap: a Vincentian tasting table built around ingredients like this one, served with the season and the story attached, rather than reduced to a syrup. For guests who'd rather cook it themselves than simply taste it, SALT Kitchen occasionally works sorrel into its seasonal menu alongside other Vincentian staples, hands-on rather than observed.

Frequently Asked Questions

Sources

• Government of Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, Nine Mornings (official)
• NPR, Sorrel: The Ruby-Red Caribbean Christmas Drink Flavored With Black History
• Face2Face Africa, Sorrel Drink: The Popular Caribbean Festive Beverage That Originated From Africa
• Effectiveness of Aqueous Hibiscus Sabdariffa Extract on Blood Pressure and Serum Lipids, PMC