Making Wine

Another discussion in a different place brought back lots of old memories. So old in fact I'm not positive I was a third of my current age at the time. It was close, however, as I remember the kitchen in which sat the refrigerator whose top held the large canner tub that was used for the must to ferment in for its first stage. 

We had a yard. The yard had dandelions, because that's what unpoisoned MN yards did. I always liked dandelions, both for their flowers and their "poofy" stage when kids of any age could blow the seeds to wherever a breeze would pick them up. So I never poisoned the yard. I "poofed".

 One day the subject of making dandelion wine came up. I can't recall whether I volunteered or I got volunteered. Either way, I filled an empty bread bag - 1 1/2 pound loaf size -with open blossoms, found out what one had to do to turn those into wine, and did it. There was a shop in Har Mar Mall in Roseville that sold the yeast, and some kind of special one-way toppers once the liquid was separated from all the solids so that fermentation  could take place, gases could escape and no new nasty yeasts could enter the brew until it was fully wine and could be bottled. At some point, raisins were involved, sugar was added, and I'm not sure what all else went into the batch. I do clearly recall thinking that with all the other stuff, why were dandelions even needed? It had been a lot of work picking those!

Still it was fun enough. I'd learned to do something new! And for once in my life it seemed to be something that pleased my husband. I'm thinking he was looking forward to "free wine" in a few months, though what with all the supplies and equipment, it was the most expensive free anything he'd ever drink in his life. 

Was it any good? I don't know. I happen to hate alcohol. But it was all gone about as soon as it got bottled, and not in the same way a later batch of wine was. 

I got the bug for experimenting. Dandelions bloom in spring. It would have been summer before the canner was available for a next batch, but by then there were no dandelions. What was blooming, and even more difficult to get blossoms from, was yellow sweet clover. Those have tiny petals on short vertical stalks, and the scent of them has always meant summer to me. It's so nostalgic that each first-of-the-summer scent is a quick kick asking, "How on earth could you ever forget what that smelled like?" It has been a great loss to not smell them for the last few years. But this was back then when making this wine meant a few hours in olfactory heaven stripping those tiny delicate petals off their 3" long green stems. In the time I'd previously filled that bread bag of dandelion blossoms, I'd fill maybe a fifth of the bread bag with sweet clover. Those went in the fridge, then out I was again the next day for more, this time with kids along to assist. Slightly more progress.

Since nobody in the world had developed a recipe for sweet clover blossom wine - or at least none I could find, being decades before Google, I just did everything else the same way as the dandelion recipe. While the must was developing, everything in the kitchen smelled the same to my nose, so it must be working.

Tasting had to wait a few months, but I was on a roll. there were other things to try. Same basic recipe, of course, because it was making something, and that something contained alcohol. I tried two more varieties I can remember. Carrot wine was one. Lovely color, and carrots contain sugar, and scraping carrots on a cheese grater was much easier than stripping teensy petals off sweet clover stems. What's not to try?

Then of course, because one often does in such circumstances, came the piece de resistance. I'd not know it for months, but this last one met everybody's resistance, even my husband's, who was so determined to get all the "benefits" of the alcohol off this last wine that he set it out in winter to freeze, the theory that what didn't freeze would be alcohol, and should leave most of the... uh, "flavor" would be a kindness... removed with the ice.

But back to the middle of the saga. It was finally time to taste the dandelion wine. We held a party. It was served.  Sipped. Thought about. Sipped again. And declared adequate for drinking. Not so adequate that our guests would be so "rude" as to finish it all up of course. Or go home and make their own. Each had brought their own bottles of their own favorite flavors, so the party went well enough. And we'd learned a couple years before to put the kids to bed first, because we nearly had a tragedy when everybody, unknown to us, thought at the first party-with-baby we had that it was great fun to give our toddling first-born a sip of their drinks, and watch her toddle to the next glass, and the next, until suddenly somebody noticed her unsteadiness and put it all together. The party ended fairly suddenly after that, and we kept a close watch on our daughter for a few hours. We were still too young and naive to realize how close a call it was until a couple conversations with real adults in the next couple days!

A few weeks later the sweet clover wine was uncorked, with my husband's best friend over to share in the glories. It was sipped, swirled, thought about, and declared... peppery. Interesting choice for a wine, but please don't do that again, eh? But I'm OK with that decision, it was a lot of work for me, after all.

Some weeks later the same with the carrot wine. Drinkable, but no real flavor. Please note that none of these experiments were poured down the sink. Either they weren't that bad, or it was just the alcohol needed a home in somebody's bloodstream.

The piece that found resistance was already in process by this time, early fall. There were no flowers other than a few which smelled bad to my nose, so I didn't choose that route. Instead I went with something green, a late crop which was known for some sugar content. Enough sugar in fact that it was part of the name: sugar snap peas! I had already eaten the peas because I loved them, though not so much the pods, at least in this early market variety of them. Ones on the market these days, to my palate, are sweeter, though I doubt it would have made a difference. But back then? What the heck, I'm having fun making wine, trying new stuff that nobody else was making (without realizing there could be very good reasons for that), and why waste these perfectly edible food parts?

Same recipe, of course same timing, process, everything, though by this time instead of the top of the fridge they "worked" in the basement. I, at least, was a bit tired of smelling alcohol in the kitchen. And while I got no weird looks from my regular day care customers, nor lost any customers during this journey as a wanna-be vintner, it was time to put things away. Note I'm not blaming that move for the results, just noting it was all coming to an end anyway.

Once again it was uncorked in something less than complete privacy, with my husband's best friend over to help taste. This time there was no display of politeness, no thoughtful long tasting, just spitting back into the glasses it was sipped out of! Probably just as well that the friend brought over a bit of weed to share, though just with my husband. Among other things, I didn't smoke either, and second-hand marijuana smoke had no effect on me. 

A few days later, rather than throw the pea pod wine out, my husband used freeze distillation to remove ice, hoping more concentrated alcohol would improve the flavor. Even for him, no such luck. Everything that didn't slide down the drain got packed up, put away, and never brought out again.

I decided houseplants made a good hobby.