Call Of The Wild

3/30/2011

After my last post you may think that I am stuck on wild berries. Well, I really am. Over the centuries, and even more so in our time, we have been changing what our produce is. We pick the best seeds from the best plants. We water everything more than it would ever get in nature. We use chemicals to not only grow but to keep the bad things away. What you get in your produce department resembles very little what the actual fruit was originally.

Strawberries are the biggest change that I can think of right off the top of my head. I have seen wild strawberries. They are small and you have to pick all day to get enough to do anything with. However, if you taste one of these wild berries and taste a strawberry you get from a grocery store you will taste a difference. You can't purchase the flavor of a wild strawberry from a store. You can get close but is close always best?

Blackberries have changed also. I have had wild black berries almost exclusively. We have always gone into the woods and picked blackberries. They are always sweet and have that distinct taste. They do not grind in your mouth with seeds. Now the ones you get in the store have that black berry flavor but they also have a watery taste and have the grit of seeds. I think I will brave the thorny limbs of the blackberry bush to make sure that any wine I make has the flavor that my ancestors would be proud of.

Now there are some berries that you can't even find in a store. The elderberry is one of the. The gooseberry is another one. For no good reason that I can think of we never domesticated these berries and a few more. We did not make them bigger at the expense of their flavor. We did not farm them into different species. These berries you can only get from the forests and wild areas of the world. Or you can pay out the nose for them on the internet.

The elderberry has become my favorite berry at the moment. This berry comes from a bush and is small and hard to deal with. However, it is worth dealing with it. For a long time I have thought that you needed to use your fingers to pull every berry off one at a time. I have been proven wrong by a video on youtube. In fact all you need to do is use a fork to pull these berries from the group. This can change a few hours of work into about 30 min. Makes getting these berries worth while.

I guess you can get whatever you want to ferment. If you want fruit from a grocery you can get fruit from a grocery. I personally think it is a waste of money when there are such bounties in the wild. I have priced what a couple of gallons of blackberries would cost at the grocery and other berries. It is worth my time to go pick these berries in the wild. It also keeps me from paying federal taxes to the government that I think needs less money than it does. I would rather walk through briars than pay for something that is free in the wild and I have and always will. However if you live in a large city or in a country where these berries do not grow you can only go to a grocery. If you are in another country I would suggest finding a berry that is in that country to keep your wine regional.

I will not judge but I will not use berries form the store unless it is dehydrated elderberries. They cost $5 an ounce and in $15 you have a great wine. I do think after this year I will not need to do this again.

Keep it bubbling!!!
Chuck