A DAY IN PHOTOS: BERRY WINE.
This past weekend, Jesse spent three hours harvesting blueberries and wild blackberries. On Monday, with the help of visiting friends, we made the years first batch of berry wine....and it is already bubbling and smelling good!
BOTTLING.
Blackberry season proved to be rather fruitful this year, if I may be allowed a mildly over-literal statement. But we ended up with four different batches of wine with at least some percentage of blackberries involved: mulberry/blackberry, blackberry/blueberry, blackberry, and a surprisingly funky blackberry/beet wine.Wednesday, I decided to bottle what I could.I love natural grape wine––I do––but there is nothing quite like the variety of hues, aromas and flavors of these country wines. Although all the batches have seemed drier than last year's blackberry wines, I'm impressed with how well they survived the heat waves (literally fermenting in our non-air-conditioned house), and how much potential they are already showing. Needless to say, Hannah and I are definitely looking forward to some tasty dinner pairings this winter!- Jesse.
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.
DRY COUNTY WINE REVIEW: A WEEK IN PHOTOS (of wine).
Although not all of our beverages from the week are pictured, I assure you that lots of good tipple was consumed. You might notice the blackberry wine pictured below as I was thrilled to finally have a chance to open some of my fruit wines for wine friends. This was really the test. Besides myself, no wine professionals had tasted my homemade wines and I needed them to see promise. Also, the wines had to stand up to a wide range of complex food and flavors. In both challenges, the wines succeeded swimmingly. If wine professionals, wine drinkers, and myself can all enjoy them, and if they can amplify a meal adequately, then it gives me confidence to say I might be on to something with these natural fruit wines. Admittedly, this was a big reason I wanted to go to New York: encouragement or a reality check. For better or worse, I got the former.- Jesse.
