BLACKBERRY VINTAGE.
As Hannah pointed out last week, we are knee-deep in a fermentation love affair. That, and it's June...so the garden is getting ready to erupt and we can often be found wielding our primitive tools, trying to beat it back. So if we haven't been posting much, it's because we are little overwhelmed and a bit over-zealous, joyfully digging out new projects like we're kids with a toy chest. And then, we noticed, the blackberries were turning.
We made a lot of wine last year. Pawpaw wine, melon wine, wild berry - you name it, we fermented it. Out of all of those projects, however, there was one wine in particular that stood out above the rest. Nearly indistinguishable from grape wine, and just as complex, was the blackberry wine. In the spirit of that, we made a vow to triple, if not quadruple, our production (if that sounds like a lot, know we only made four bottles last year) the next time blackberry season came around. Well, it's around! So Hannah, Wendell and I have been working overtime to keep the farm afloat and get the blackberries a'bubbling. So far so good! The first batch, which we tossed a pint of blueberries into (because we could), smelled oddly meaty but tasted amazing and we just put it into a carboy this morning. The second batch should start fermentation today. The third batch, we'll pick in a few days and the fourth?!––next week, or here's hoping.- Jesse.
THE DRY COUNTY WINE REVIEW: PAWPAW EDITION
There are one-hundred and twenty counties in Kentucky. Fifty-five or so are dry, around thirty-five are "moist," and thirty are wet. The county we're moving into, Bath, is completely dry. This is a rather hilarious state of affairs for a young man like myself who moved to Kentucky with the express intention of making his own wine.You see, after national Prohibition ended in 1933 many states including Kentucky preferred not to abandon Prohibition altogether instead opting for the local option which gave individual counties the opportunity to vote on their own dry laws. Bath stayed dry, but lucky for me, it's not illegal to make small amounts of wine for personal consumption, it's only illegal to sell it. In homage to this irony I'm starting The Dry County Wine Review to occasionally discuss our dry county winemaking or wine drinking. On Friday, Hannah and I went to visit the farm and packed a picnic of Thanksgiving leftovers and a bottle of Pawpaw wine. Pawpaws are a Native American tree fruit that taste like nature's ill-fated attempt at crossing a mango and banana. They're medium-sized, peanut-shaped green fruits with a tropical yellow custard flesh.
The outside of the pawpaw is bitter, and when I made the wine I wanted to include about 45% of these skins for tannin and a little savory edge. Apologies, but this is where it gets a little nerdy. As I understand it, and as Louis Pasteur tells us, different types of yeasts attach themselves to different kinds of fruit based on their acidity and sugar level. I wanted to maintain some of that in the fermentation in lieu of simply collecting random yeasts out of the air. I packed the pawpaws into a gallon jar and poured over them a couple cups of spring water and a cup of honey. Pawpaws are not particularly juicy or as sweet as grapes, so I had to add the water for liquid, and the honey to boost the sugar level. I don't mind chapitalizing with honey; it takes longer but I love the idea of incorporating the healthful qualities of honey to a wine along with the bio-diversity it provides in the end-result. Same for the spring water. I let the mess ferment in an open jar (or crock if available) for four days then moved it into a glass carboy––an airtight container for the secondary fermentation. It stayed there for one month, and then into bottle for several more. This particular gallon yielded exactly one bottle of wine. As I mentioned, we opened that bottle Friday. And it. was. interesting. I don't mind it when a wine turns out odd, and Hannah, to her credit, always obliges my whims. She's a trooper but admitted this wine was a bit too much even for her. It tasted like tart and tropical grapefruit juice. I would guess the alcohol was no more than 8%. The acidity was aggressive but I liked it with the food. Quite honestly, it wasn't the most enjoyable wine I've ever drunk, but I'd take it over a typical Parker wine any day. But the intention was never to make great wine––mainly because I don't quite know how yet––it was to make dry, healthful wines. And this wine was undeniably healthful––so alive it was grinning. Producers legally can't say it so I'll do it: Wine is extremely good for your health––from your immune system to your digestive––it's something we need in our diets. In her book Nourishing Traditions, Sally Fallon writes that “The enzymes in raw food, particularly raw fermented food, help to start the process of digestion and reduce the body’s need to produce digestive enzymes." We need fermentation, be it kimchi, beer, wine or pickles. If it's wine, it's not always gonna be 100 points. But the diversity is what we need, whether said diversity comes from using different fruits, waters or sweeteners, and sometimes you've just gotta shoot it back and pretend its medicine. Other times, when it's tasty, you can sip slowly and enjoy. Fortunately for Hannah, I made both kinds this year. What's fun is the mystery, what's exciting is the health, and what's hard to get beyond is the dogma that says the only good wines come from grapes. In The Dry County Wine Review, I'm always going to be begging to differ: good wine is the wine that grins––grape, blackberry, pawpaw or otherwise.- Jesse.