A friendly warning
Wine out of what?
When it comes to wine making, you mortals are curiously and delightfully quaint. During your Civil War, when the U.S. faced serious food and supply shortages, you cranked some of your wine out of pumpkin, several recipes for which live to this day. You even found a way to squeeze it out of ginger amid 19th-century Britain’s cholera epidemic, in the belief that the plant protected against the disease. Rhubarb, soy, plum, turnip, rutabaga, even Little Miss Muffet’s fabled curds and whey: When it comes to wine extraction, you’ll go to any lengths and try any substance.
And we do convey our thanks for the several centuries’ antics and amusements you’ve staged accordingly.
Yes, your inventiveness is indeed admirable—but you really needn’t stray that far from the grape family in your quest. Raisins, in fact, are nothing more than dried grapes, and they make a perfectly fine base for a sherry called De Anada Pedro Ximenez, out of southern Spain’s Alvear Winery. The 2003 entry is like nothing you’ve ever seen. It’s this really deep amber, not at all like the red or white or pink you’re accustomed to down here. It actually smells kind of like beer at first, which is even more disarming. Soon enough, though, the thick honey and toffee aftertaste kicks in, complementing your choice of marbled cheeses or pastry. It’s not bad by itself, either, but only over ice and only if you have a fetish for sweets, and many of you do.
This one’s available for, oh, say, $14 to $22 a bottle, depending on your provider. You’ll find it mostly online at places like winerx.com, as only 300 cases have been imported into the U.S. Meanwhile, please accept our blessings as you explore your obsession with the most storied beverage on earth, in all its forms and amid all its foundations—although you may want to steer clear of water as your base. One of our own has that one covered, and if you even think about calling him on it, he can turn into one persnickety son of a bitch.
Comments
Ah, wine of the dried and parched grape. Though the wine deity above has picked some continental vintage I cannot speak for, I somehow doubt that the experience I would find in it could rival my first taste of such a drink.
It was no vintner residing in a villa among perfectly cultivated vines on an impeccably angled hillside who provided me a bottle. No, it was the somewhat inebriated family friend and president of the catholic Young Men's Institute, Chief Root.
Chief had made the wine in old glass jugs, shaped like the "XXX" jugs, long relegated otherwise to the realm of cartoons. He had carefully stored them in our parish hall near where the YMI sold its donuts to after-church folk. In the cupboard, the bottles aged for some time in the locked darkness. Then, the annual dinner came.
When we made it to the outdoor park in County land near Lake Jennings, the YMI members and their friends and family members began their libations. At one point, Chief Root waved me over.
"Drink this," he said, handing me a half-empty 2-gallon jug of the brownish stuff. I did.
"Wow, chief," I said. "It tastes almost like the altar wine."
He looked at me cockeyed. "You're only 14, how do you know what that tastes like?"
I smiled and did not tell him that my fellow altar servers and I tended to "test" the stuff before masses. He smiled back and chuckled.
"You take that with you, kid," he said.
I did, and as I clambered up the side of a hill to hide my treasure, a pretty girl two years my senior joined me. Missy, Chief's granddaughter.
Thanks, Chief. Those memories, drunken or not, are vivid stuff after 23 years. Rest in peace.
I highly recommend the lofty words above (from the original article) be heeded, but that one also consider any raisin wine for at least a taste if the specific bottle, as is prescribed, is unavailable.
Bring a girl or a boy to overdo it with. Muahaha.