Sister’s Surplus Grapes Pose a Vintage Test

It all started when my sister came to drink coffee, and stayed to complain about the grapevine explosion in her backyard. She had made jam, muffins, cobbler, pie, cake, juice and had even tried grape cookies but there were still more grapes left on the vines.

Neighbors were gagging and hiding when they saw her coming. Even the sparrows were giving her a bad time, dining on the sweet harvest at the first crack of dawn, waking the whole family with their drunken twittering, then dive-bombing her when she dared to enter their territory. “What in the world am I going to do?” Lois asked.

My efficiency-expert husband’s ears stood at attention and his paper dropped to the floor . . . a problem for him to solve. Cogs spun around in his head and in three seconds the answer shot out in two frugal words, “Make wine.”

“But I don’t know how and the cookbook doesn’t have it.”

“No problem,” Joe said. “I just saw a book on ‘How to Make Wine in Your Kitchen’ and I’ll pick up a copy tomorrow. Don’t worry about a thing.”

I’m not sure when, but, somewhere in the middle of this conversation, roles became reversed and Lois became the supplier with Joe as producer-director. Ignoring my loudly proclaimed lack of enthusiasm for the whole project, they solemnly shook hands and my sister went home with a complacent smirk on her face.

I hoped she would develop amnesia during the night and forget the whole thing. It was a dirty thing to do to anyone, especially a beloved sister. But about noon the next day when the doorbell rang, I opened the door and there they sat . . . three bushel baskets of over-ripe grapes with a few busy gnats buzzing over them. There was no sister, just a bunch of loud-mouthed sparrows in a tree passing on the word to “come and get it.” A big, red bow attached to one basket had a message, “happy tromping.”

I was still washing and picking grapes when Joe arrived home that night carrying a large plastic garbage can and two small books. “How’d it go today, dear? What are we having for dinner?” he asked.

“Grapes!” I answered dourly.

We went out for dinner and that was only the first of many expenses I entered in the ledger Joe had thoughtfully provided to maintain an account on the free grape wine. Before the project was completed I almost developed writer’s cramp. Although the book said you could use ingredients found in anyone’s kitchen, he decided we needed a few refinements to make a wine of gourmet quality.

Plain grocery-store yeast was not good enough; wine yeast was superior. He gave me a list to take to the wine-supply store the next day . . . fermenting tanks, locks, siphon, corks, a sacrometer to measure sugar content as the wine developed, scales and a charcoal keg for aging the wine. “Write that down, will you dear?” became words I learned to live by. I visited that supply store so often the clerk began to leer at me and wink. “Don’t worry about a thing” Joe said, busily throwing out all the good food in the refrigerator and replacing it with gooey grapes. “Take some grapes next door and ask to put them in their refrigerator.” That was how the word got out and we became notorious in the neighborhood as the “moonlight moonshiners,” that and the little matter of the bottles.

(Federal law allows an adult to produce up to 200 gallons of wine for personal and family use--and not for resale--per year without payment of tax, providing there are two or more adults in a household. One hundred gallons a year is permissible if there is only one adult in the household. An adult is defined as a person of legal drinking age.

California law also allows an adult to produce up to 200 gallons a year without a license; however, city and county regulations may differ, so it is advisable to check with local alcoholic beverage control authorities before undertaking a home wine-making project.)

By the time Joe arrived home the next evening laden with more containers, his scientific brain had figured out another obvious problem--what does one do with several garbage cans full of wine after they are fermented? The answer is to bottle it, but ordinary soda bottles just wouldn’t do, he said. Wine had to be corked into colored glass so sunlight wouldn’t damage it and then laid on its side to age for several months.

After dark he broke out his next plan. He armed me with a flashlight and dragged me into the alley, “We’re going bottle hunting,” he said. And we did, up and down miles of dark mysterious alleys we searched through trash cans. I felt I knew my neighbors better for I could tell what they’d been eating for the last four days. Although I had never met that blessed Scotch drinker down the street, I knew I was going to love him dearly. His trash can was a green oasis of Scotch bottles blooming along the desolate stretches of unlit alley. And he never seemed to notice anything strange when he unexpectedly drove into his garage just as we were delving into this treasure trove with a flashlight. Maybe stranger things had happened to him that day. He got out of his car, tucked a fresh, unopened green bottle under his arm and walked carefully toward his gate. “Good evening,” he said.

Joe could hardly wait to finish dinner before he started his mysterious alchemy. He squashed the already soggy grapes in the garbage can mixed with sugar carefully weighed on the new scale. He added cereal which he declared “fed” the yeast. The thought of those little yeast-bugs multiplying in that murky mess was too much for my system after last night’s moonlight foray, so I went to bed. I heard him crawl in much later humming happily to himself.

The next morning before departing for work he told me to just forget the wine as it would take care of itself. I wish I could have forgotten it. It was fortunate I planned to stay home and clean house, not that I got any cleaning done. I had just rolled out the vacuum when I heard strange noises emanating from that garbage can somewhat reminiscent of the inner rumblings of a dormant volcano coming back to life.

While I speculated whether it was wise to lift the lid to peek, the problem was solved for me. It rose as though by levitation, a foamy white froth peered over the top of the can and proceeded to creep down the sides of the cupboard and over the floor. I frantically searched for a long-handled spoon to beat back this monster, but that witch’s caldron continued to burble and erupt at 10 minute intervals all day. By the time Joe got home I was completely exhausted. “We’re eating out,” I muttered, “Write that down.” I fully expected that wine with its Frankenstein-like personality to meet us at the door when we got home but all it had done was run around the kitchen floor eating-off two layers of vinyl.

The Brewery Business

By the weekend, the smell had started and there was no way to disguise the fact we were in the brewery business. The pungent odor of souring grape-mash drifted around the neighborhood. People started dropping by to borrow eggs and staying to watch the strange gyrations of the garbage can lids which hopped like Mexican jumping beans. Many kibitzed but none offered to sample. Joe’s aunt, who is known as a great abstainer, chose that unfortunate day to drop by for a unexpected call. She always said she had never even smelled spirits, and I believed her as she accepted my lame apologies for my malodorous termite spray, merely remarking it was a very good idea to protect ourselves as she could hear them gnawing.

Early Sunday morning when I woke, Joe’s bed was empty. There were thumps under the flooring and I threw on a robe and rushed to the back yard. My husband’s shoes were protruding from a gaping black hole in the foundation. Joe backed out of the hole with cobwebs draped about his ears, a dirty face and a happy, confident grin. “I thought of this in the night,” he confided smugly, “to store the wine where it is cool. Later I’ll build an insulated, temperature-controlled closet in the house.” I stuffed cotton in my ears and went back to bed, hoping this would only be a bad dream when I woke again.

I think that incident did something to me; I never had the strength to protest again, even though the wine equipment kept growing like Topsy, usurping most of my cupboard space in the kitchen and eventually running over into the rear bathroom. I just kept turning more pages in the ledger, writing in more expenses, printed labels, gold wax for sealing, paint repairs to the kitchen. I forgave my sister, and I even learned not to scream when bottles exploded on excessively hot days, this was prior to Joe’s non-explosive formula.

Maybe I even became a little philosophical. As I sat sipping the liquid gold Joe named ‘Viking Virgin,’ I had to admit it was a tasty little beverage. So what if it cost a lot to make, It was worth every cent, for it kept Joe so busy and broke he couldn’t go out to play cards with the boys. I never had so much companionship since we were first married.