Inspiration

Knowing little to nothing about winemaking and having some leisure time during a Christmas break, I sought the advice of my fiance's grandfather, who has been making wine since the mid 1960's. He showed me some tricks, how he stores his wine, and a basement that contains old metal cabinets full of wine from the past four decades.

Grandpa's winemaking process is notable to me for many reasons:

1. He was an apprentice to no one except text. He learned how to make his first batch of wine by going to the local library and copying down old recipes from books. He is a heavy advocate of 'winging it'.

2. He now uses only the fruit he has grown in his garden with his wife. He is in his mid-80s and still doing it the same way.

3. No preservatives or chemicals have ever been used in his wine. After he sanitizes, he uses only hand-pressed fruit juice, sugar and water. When the first batch aged and he drank it, it didn't kill him, and that told him chemicals were unnecessary. At Christmastime, I tasted from a bottle made in 1978. I am indeed alive and I get a goofy grin anytime I recall the taste of it.

4. All of his wine is excellent: The strawberry wine, the gooseberry wine, the muscadine wine. It is as good as, or better than, any wine I've purchased at a store.

5. Most of it is semi-sweet to sweet and it is consumed during family gatherings, much like coffee is served in other places, during a late night family card game. Never have I seen anyone plow through a glass of it. It seems to be an unspoken rule that it is to be enjoyed slowly.

This in mind, I have a lot to learn through trial and error over the next several years. My fiance and I plan to toil in our own garden and work toward our own little plot of Wine nirvana and we hope our friends will be joining us for years to come.

Coming next from me will be a story-so-far description of my first attempt at a blackberry wine.