Of the garden wines we have made thus far, black currant stands highest as an agreeable winter-evening wine. Its darkness matches the opaque red-purple of the darker red-grape wine. Its flavor, its piquancy, stops just short of assaulting the tongue with its assertive tang.
As I remember from a week or two ago, when Martha and I opened a bottle of last fall's black currant, it may have fallen short, as a wine, in its body -- that sense to the tongue of having a palpable presence beyond the liquid essence -- something different from its sweetness. Even so the black currant occupies a wine glass with authority. The curious drinker cannot help but wonder: what deep thoughts did those pendulous clusters have, while deepening in hue to such light-absorbing darkness at the height of summer?
You can only imagine they were not thoughts of inconsequential frippery. These berries meditated on earthy themes ... regarded with equanimity the days of dry heat and those of persistent wetness ... ignored that brightly extravagant and somewhat show-offy red currant next door.
Cheers ...
Showing posts with label black currants. Show all posts
Showing posts with label black currants. Show all posts
Tuesday, March 9, 2010
Monday, March 8, 2010
Uppity
Black currants seem quite a different beast, metaphorically speaking, from red ones.
The peculiar taste component of the currant, which is far away and in the distant hazy background of the flashy but mild-mannered red currant, comes to the fore in the black. In the bushy plant itself the flavor is so strong that sometimes in walking by and brushing the leaves you can catch the scent in the air. Last year shortly after the post-harvest trimming, when I made a trip back to that southeast-yard compost pile where the trimmings went, the scent seemed so strong that I took from those old canes the youngest leaves from at or near the tips. When drying them, the tangy, resin-resonant, un-berryish forwardness of this flavor spread from the dehydrator in the kitchen -- we have a couple electric dehydrators -- and through the house. Now and then a few pinches of dried leaf go into a teapot of evening mint, where the black currant makes itself known with its air, or aroma, of forthright self-importance. If this tincture has medicinal qualities I have no idea. It certainly should -- although then it might be insufferable in its presumptions.
Cheers ...
The peculiar taste component of the currant, which is far away and in the distant hazy background of the flashy but mild-mannered red currant, comes to the fore in the black. In the bushy plant itself the flavor is so strong that sometimes in walking by and brushing the leaves you can catch the scent in the air. Last year shortly after the post-harvest trimming, when I made a trip back to that southeast-yard compost pile where the trimmings went, the scent seemed so strong that I took from those old canes the youngest leaves from at or near the tips. When drying them, the tangy, resin-resonant, un-berryish forwardness of this flavor spread from the dehydrator in the kitchen -- we have a couple electric dehydrators -- and through the house. Now and then a few pinches of dried leaf go into a teapot of evening mint, where the black currant makes itself known with its air, or aroma, of forthright self-importance. If this tincture has medicinal qualities I have no idea. It certainly should -- although then it might be insufferable in its presumptions.
Cheers ...
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