Strawberry Wine, Part II

As I noted before the holiday, the situation seemed promising for doing a direct comparison between cooked Wine 30, strawberry, and raw Wine 32, also strawberry, made soon afterward.

Having opened Wine 30 on that day, I went back into the basement to find Wine 32 -- and turned up Wine 30 after Wine 30. Somewhere among the bottles we may yet have some Wine 32. My suspicion, though, is that I had left the Wine 32 bottles on a table nearer the front of the basement ... so that they were the ones that I fetched up on whatever whimsical evenings they were that came along, when a bit of something different sounded like just the thing to break up the same-old.

The chances are good that this nicely set-up opportunity for visual and nasal and lingual comparative testing has passed us by.

On the other hand, the chances are mighty good, too, that had I found a bottle of Wine 32 in the basement, that day, I would have uncorked it, decanted it ... and then we would have said, "Ah! Better!" -- and consigned Wine 30 to the fridge for cooking, without giving a thought to doing a thoughtful, careful comparison.

For I did bring forth a Wine 29, rhubarb-strawberry, instead -- a raw wine -- and we said, "Ah! Better!" -- and consigned Wine 30 to the fridge for cooking.

We have quite a lot of Wine 30. We had better do quite a lot of cooking.

Cheers ...

Whose Name Shall Go Unmentioned

Many of our garden wines are of a lighter nature -- suited for that sun-blasted day of mid-summer, especially. Wines that are lemon-tinted, peach-colored, lightly blushed, verging on the clear ... somehow on a winter's night when chill pervades the rooms and we contemplate turning up the thermostat instead of reaching for a cooling draught of cellar-aging garden-essence, many of the homegrowns seem not to be the evening's ingredient quite being called for.

At such a moment a dry red of the grape variety might come to mind ... but the house recently has had no dry reds -- except the bottle of cooking red, sitting beside the refrigerator.

That one is amusing in its origin. It is our only wine picked up at a garage sale. In a garage in a nearby village we found a wine-making kit, which seemed worthwhile buying for the spare equipment. It included an airtight, sealed bag of grape pressings, however. I thought to myself, Why not? So into a small crock the purply stuff went.

The answer to Why not? is that the kit came originally from one of those execrable super-blights to American commerce Whose Name Shall Go Unmentioned, where people shop for lowest quality, at lowest cost to personal wallet, and at greatest cost to society.

The wine, which we more-or-less call Whose Name Shall Go Unmentioned Wine, is awful, of course. Which is why it sits beside refrigerator awaiting tomato sauces.

Cheers ...