Pressing the Point.... or "Whining about Wine"

The primary drawback with wine is the dreaded tannin-induced headache.  This risk is doubly noxious when it comes to wines made from fruit other than grapes.  A 2004 paper entitled The Effect of Two Methods of Pomegranate (Punica granatum L) Juice Extraction on Quality During Storage at 4ºC makes note of the fact that the chief reason tannins exist in fruit juices is the damage to cellular tissue when fruit is squeezed as part of the extraction process.  With pomegranates in particular, this leads to a bitter taste; in spite of having high citric acid content as well as a host of interesting sugars, this is the overwhelming sensation most people experience when drinking pomegranate juice.

Juicers invariably represent the cheapest, easiest way to get at the goods – the most obvious examples in the typical kitchen include orange juice squeezers, which really amount to just a catch-all device with a protrusion on which the sliced orange is crushed; alternatively, think of the humble garlic press, which crushes garlic and excretes it through a grate or grill.  In each case, manual force pulverizes and pulps the produce until the finished portion is in the desired form.

The superior method in terms of juice quality is the use of a centrifugal juice extractor.  Naturally, being the superior method, it is also the more expensive method.  Most centrifuges are fairly straightforward in their construction; however, a high powered motor necessary to create the extreme forces involved in this extraction method carries a higher price tag than does the crank or handle on a device which relies more on good old fashioned elbow grease for the requisite force.

We are not close enough yet to bringing in the kind of volume from our fruit crops which would justify the extra expense, but we are seriously thinking about it.  A good quality extractor is on the long-term list, because if we can reduce the bitter taste of pure pomegranate juice, that would be pure gold for us.

Additionally, we have always scoffed at purists in the vintner world.  The questions we ask when discussing a fine wine are never the same as the questions asked by aficionados; we want to know “Does it taste good?”  “Does it go with spicy food?”  “Does it go with chocolate?”  Whether or not it was blended, has a good nose, is dry or sweet, we could care less about any of that.

Disdain for fruit wines, in fact, reminds us of all the conventional wisdom in the National Football League about Washington Redskins quarterback Doug Williams:  “A black man will never win as a quarterback in this league.”  Horse-hockey.  A winner is a winner; Mr. Williams has his Super Bowl ring; the scoffers have their sour grapes.  And good wine is good wine, regardless of whether it was made with pinot grapes from a vineyard in Provence, or from concord grapes growing wild in Massachusetts, or from blackberries growing on our backyard fence.

Our challenge, obviously, is not going to be getting it correct.  Our challenge will be to get it right.  Propriety can take a flying leap; we just want our guests to be as pleased with their beverage as they always are with their cobbler.

All that having been said, we now come to the difficult admission:  the reason conventional wisdom about wine is so difficult to shake is because it is founded upon thousands of years of experimentation and endeavor.  Traditional wines are categorized the way they are precisely because for so long, the traditional methods have worked.

Most novitiates know only the difference between "white" and "red", and might be familiar with the aversion of wine enthusiasts for the more plebeian "rosé".  What makes a pinot grigio different from a pinot noir, or what Miles meant by "If anybody orders any (expletive) merlot, I'm leaving!" is a mystery to most consumers; the truth is, however, that these distinctions all come from much research and experience which has led to a host of subtle rules-of-the-road for producers and consumers.

However, we believe that as with most things in life, wine can be vastly improved by steady application of principles borrowed from other disciplines.  The best jazz musicians all borrowed from blues; the best novelists all allude to classical Greek comedies and tragedies; the best wines all taste like something the consumer can't quite remember, but they know it makes them feel good.  Maybe it is the lavender overtones of a particular burgundy which reminds one of homemade lime sherbet their grandmother made.  Maybe the pungent anise of a chardonnay made from grapes grown next to a basil field brings to mind the pleasant memories of a stern father relaxing at the end of the day, putting down his accounting ledger, and smoking a pipe.

We don't know what other people's favorite memories are, we just know that we at Myrtle's place like sweet fruit drinks, including sweet fruit wines.  Messina Hof Port is perhaps the best tasting beverage we have ever consumed.  We don't aim to be better than Messina Hof; we just aim to be better than other home grown beverages.

And part of that will involve experimentation.  If the big problem with two of our basic crops, pomegranates and wild grapes, is that the natural sweetness of the fruit does not translate to sweet juice, then we will attack that problem first.  Given that our trees are probably 2-3 years out from production, we have some time, but it's never too early to start thinking about experimentation.

So.  We're on the lookout for inexpensive centrifugal fruit juicers.  We'll report excitedly when we find (and, more importantly, figure out how to pay for) one.  Until then,

Happy farming!

Gardening at Night, and Other Absurdities

Those of you who have been paying attention may have come to the conclusion by now that we're a little odd.

No denying it.  The proprietors of Big Myrtle's Tea Shoppe and Egg Emporium do not care much about conformity; the surest way to make us yawn is to talk about a master-planned neighborhood, where every home on the platte is painted the same color, and none of the houses is allowed to have trees or shrubs at unauthorized heights.

Which may go a long way to explaining why we're posting pictures of plants obviously taken at night, when the photographic capabilities of our cheap little digital camera are dwarfed by those of your average pinhole camera made by enthusiastic 3rd graders.  See, we planted our brand-spankin'-new olive trees at night.

Why?  Because that's when we bought them, and we were so excited, we couldn't wait 12 more hours before putting them in the ground.

We had assumed we were going to have to travel over 100 miles and pay much higher prices to purchase arbequina olive trees, and we were on the verge of despair because between gutting the lighting in the house, building a new bedroom for our daughter, and putting a new roof and new laying box on/in the chicken coop, funds for major improvements were beginning to run a little slim this spring, and we thought we may have to put off the olive tree purchase until next fall at the earliest.   Then, miracle of miracles, when we stopped at Farm Patch (a local produce stand which also sells garden plants), with the express purpose of buying african basil (much nicer plant than your standard "sweet" variety), we noticed a group of olive trees bunched in the corner.

We naturally bought them all.

So, our two big projects in the garden this year were pomegranates and olives.  We have now succeeded in installing the two plants in our garden which we have been expressly discouraged about by the priggish pessimists of the Brazos Valley gardening world.  And, more to the point, we have a solid plan, we're sure it will work, and we are executing the plan precisely.

If we can't get the western side of our yard to grow into a sicilian paradise using chicken-poop compost and rancid pond water, then it can't be done.

Tomorrow, we'll put in our traditional summer veggies and some more herbs, we'll weed, and we'll mulch.  But in the meanwhile, we have olives and pomegranates growing in our yard!

Happy farming!