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Wine without Grapes
Submitted by redmondkr on Wed, 2006/08/16 - 9:07pm.
CNN is reporting a winery in Connecticut that uses no grapes. Instead they are making fruit wines using raspberries, blackberries, cherries, and rhubarb. Yesterday, I watched as a crew from RFD-TV interviewed a Kansas man who made wine from elderberries as well as elderflowers. He had acres of the plants for his "vineyard" and was apparently making a financial go of the project.
Blasphemy, you say!
My mother used to make a beautiful strawberry-rhubarb wine and I have made elderflower wine from a recipe my grandmother brought from Germany in 1891. It's hard work but it makes a wonderful pale gold product. I collected my blossoms from the wild and, believe me, passersby look at you as though you're some kind of nut as you stuff these "weeds" into a grocery sack.
But there is beauty in knowing that you will have the last laugh when you pop that cork. Every June when I pass the clustered blossoms along a country road, I think, "I need to make another run of that stuff."
Submitted by Stan G (not verified) on Wed, 2006/08/16 - 9:34pm.
As kids, we would make a little spending change by gathering dandelion flowers for an Italian woman who used them to make wine.
Years later while visiting friends in Lake City, the host asked if I'd like a glass of wine. I declined until he mentioned that it was homemade blackberry wine; one of the smoothest, most delightful wines I have ever tasted. That's when he explained that they had found several bottles under his teatotaler grandmother's front porch. I can't recall how old they estimated in might have been, but it was definitely in excess of twenty years.
As kids, we would make a little spending change by gathering dandelion flowers for an Italian woman who used them to make wine.
Years later while visiting friends in Lake City, the host asked if I'd like a glass of wine. I declined until he mentioned that it was homemade blackberry wine; one of the smoothest, most delightful wines I have ever tasted. That's when he explained that they had found several bottles under his teatotaler grandmother's front porch. I can't recall how old they estimated in might have been, but it was definitely in excess of twenty years.
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