Have You Heard of Fraughan Sunday? Glendalough Distillery Celebrates Ireland’s Ancient Wild Blueberry Harvest
Most Irish people have never heard of Fraughan Sunday, despite it being one of the country’s oldest summer traditions.
Celebrated on the last Sunday of July, Fraughan Sunday (pronounced frockin) saw families leave behind their daily work to go in search of wild fraughans, or wild blueberries, marking the beginning of the ancient harvest festival, Lúnasa. It was also a day for courting: a girl might bake a blueberry cake for the boy she liked best. This year, Glendalough Distillery is shining a light on the forgotten tradition and encouraging people to rediscover one of Ireland’s most unique seasonal rituals.
Have you ever eaten fraughans? (pronounced frockins), ‘fraughan’ comes from the Irish word for heather, fraoch, as fraughans like to grow where the heather grows, in acidic soil. You’ll find them among the heather in the black, peaty soil on the sides of the mountains or in old oak woodlands. They are the ancestor of the modern blueberry that you find in the shops. But they are more nutritious, high in antioxidants and vitamins and, unlike the shop bought ones, they have a purple juice that will colour your hands as you pick them. One of the former uses of fraughans was as a dye for wool, linen and other natural fibres used to make clothing and blankets in Ireland.
The tradition carries real social history too. During the First and Second World Wars, families across the Wicklow Mountains and the wider Leinster uplands, from children as young as three or four to the most elderly members of the community, spent the harvest season gathering fraughans to sell to buyers who collected them each evening. The income helped pay debts and buy shoes and schoolbooks. The berries themselves were exported to England for jam-making at a time when the population was deficient in fresh fruit, and were also used to dye soldiers’ uniforms.
At Glendalough Distillery, the tradition never really stopped. Every summer, the distillery’s full-time forager, Geraldine Kavanagh, heads into the Wicklow Mountains to hand-pick fraughans for use in Glendalough Distillery’s Summer Gin, where their more complex flavour sets them apart from store-bought berries.
Geraldine picks entirely by hand rather than with mechanical tools. It’s a slower method, but one she prefers: hand-picking naturally drops some berries back onto the mountainside, helping the plants regenerate, and leaves plenty of fruit behind for the deer, birds and other wildlife that rely on them. Tools, by contrast, tend to strip the plant bare and pull leaves in with the fruit.
Beyond gin, fraughans are also a favourite in Geraldine’s own kitchen, used in cakes, ice cream and tarts, and she snacks on plenty while out picking, when the fresh berries’ health benefits are hard to ignore.
For anyone picking their own this summer, Geraldine has shared her go-to Fraughan Sunday serve:
Glendalough Distillery Fraughan Berry Collins (serves 2)
A twist on the classic Collins, made with muddled wild berries.
Ingredients:
- 20 wild berries (fraughans, wild raspberries and wild strawberries if you can find them)
- 2 dashes raspberry/strawberry syrup
- 4 measures Glendalough Distillery Wild Botanical Gin
- 4 teaspoons lemon juice
- Sugar syrup, to taste
- Soda water, to top up
- Garnish: wild berries or fresh mint
Method:
Divide the berries and strawberry syrup between two highball glasses. Muddle well. Fill each glass with ice, then add the gin, lemon juice and sugar syrup, and stir. Top with soda water and garnish with wild berries or mint.
Glendalough Distillery is an Origin Green Gold Member, and is dedicated to the Wicklow Mountains through reforestation initiatives and sustainable foraging practices, ensuring the region thrives for future generations.