March 3, 2010

Santa Rita Hills, CA.

A quick update on my Jumbleberry Freezer Surprise. I checked it for clearing the next morning, and what did my eyes behold? 

Wherein your author answers the question, 'Whatever happened to that fruit wine?'

When I last left off blogging about my Jumbleberry Freezer Surprise wine (a quick re-cap: a failed freezer door seal defrosted many pounds of fruit and left me with no choice but to engage my winemaking prowess to salvage said fruits)I had just done the first racking from the primary fermenter, away from the fruit solids and into carboys. That was some time ago . . . July of 2009 as I recall . . . ah well, Emerson said punctuality was the hobgoblin of those one  a schedule and all that. 

Nice manicure

Latin for, 'Die, bottom-dwelling fish!'

Ah! Those bad sulfites; they’re such an easy target. What else can people blame for headaches after drinking red wine? After all, there is even a regulation that requires the mandatory mention contains sulfites on all wine sold in the U.S. So there must be some health concerns with sulfites. But why is that not indicated on other sulfite-containing food and beverages? Why is wine singled out? All are valid, interesting questions.

Recent research has shed some light on this controversy as only a very small segment of the population, approximately one percent, is actually allergic, exhibiting asthmatic reactions, not headaches. In fact, very few people, if any, actually complain of headaches after drinking white wines, which typically contain higher levels of sulfite as these are more prone to spoilage effects and therefore need added protection.

Dear Wine Kit Guy,

Which wine should I serve with my holiday dinner? My family does the full-pull with turkey, stuffing, cranberry sauce, yams, Brussels sprouts, mashed potatoes, the whole shebang, and I need a wine to go with all of it! Help me Obi-Wan Kit-nobi, you're my only hope!

THE AUTHOR'S APOLOGY FOR HIS STORY

(With further apologies to the rotating ghost of John Bunyan)

When at the first I took my glass in hand
Thus for to drink, I did not understand
That I at all should take a little drink
At such a point I stood on the brink
To take another; which, when almost done,
Before I was aware, the bottle was gone.

I am living proof that wine lovers are made, not born. If I can find a space in my life to learn about and enjoy wine, literally anybody can.

You see I didn’t grow up drinking wine. Indeed, the only wine available in our family was a screw-topped, vaguely soda-poppish beverage (‘Lonesome Charlie’ for those with long memories) heavy on the sugar and bubbles, but light on actual wine content. If this was wine, include me out, I thought.

Another influence was my family’s ethnic and religious background: I come from a long line of Russian-Germans, observant of the Mennonite faith. While long on community, family and church, they disapproved of beverage alcohol on general principles. It was felt that alcohol was not drunk to appreciate the subtlety of its flavours and aromas: it was drunk stealthily, behind the barn, for the purposes of sneaking into the pool hall to lose the grocery money among loose women. While we were less observant than some (well, okay, most), these attitudes still coloured how I felt about drinking as a lad. I wanted to be like my old man, I thought, and drink beer from cans and Rye whisky mixed with cola.

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I get asked this question quite frequently, as of lately, particularly in light of recent studies linking bisphenol-A (BPA)—the plastic used to line beverage containers and tin food cans—to cancer. The latest research from the Université de Sherbrooke in Québec, Canada and published in Toxicology and Applied Pharmacology reports that BPA can adversely affect development of the fetus in pregnant women.

Until fairly recently, glass carboys were really the only practical containers for fermenting and storing wine available to home winemakers. However, glass carboys are heavy, slippery when wet, and fragile—much wine has been spilled and many people have been injured as the result of accidental breakage.

In which Wes discusses the end of the 2009 calendar year, discusses the coming growing season and waxes poetic on the number on a calendar changing.

I have this thing about New Years.  It's one of the holidays that I treasure, because it actually signifies something that hasn't been revised into meaninglessness.  Christmas is just the ancient pagan festival of Festivus respun by the Church to keep the peasants confused.  Easter?  Verunal equinox and ancient Spring Fertility rights.  Ever wonder what chocolate and rabbits have to do with Jesus?  But New Years is one of those ecstatic rituals that has not been co-opted or diluted by the morality police.  We won't let them.  MADD can remind us not to drink and drive, but if they tried to take our cocktails away, we would beat those nouveau-axe-wielders down like they owed us money.  Lots of money.  New Years' is ours and they SHOULD be afraid of millions of amateur drunks wearing stupid hats and singing an oddly Celtic-sounding  song that no one knows past the first five words.  It's ritual the way it was in the Old World, complete with mind-numbing beverages, societal permissiveness toward intoxication, and even the potential for having rushed and sloppy sex in a closet somewhere.  Ahhh..the Old Time Religion....