Fine Wines!

By Jack Elliott
Contributor

Spring… when a young man’s fancy turns to love. Old men’s fancy turns to something else… like wine making. That what this latest batch of spring weather turned the attention of the gathering at the debating table in the Bakery in Rainy River to the other day. Anything to depress the latest batch of snow gently floating down and the robins singing insanely in the crab apple trees along the street.
“Yeah, ran off another batch last week,” offered Scrounger. His acquisition of a wine making setup at the auction last year has turned him into Rainy’s latest brewmeister.
“ You’ll have to have us all out for a wine tasting session, soon as it gets some age on it,” cut in Pickle, holding his cup out for his fourth free refill.
“No need. It tastes just fine. We get a good taste or two just priming the siphon” Scrounger quickly countered, dashing the hopes of the crew ready to finish their coffees and leave en masse for Scrounger’s.
“Whaddya mean a ‘tasting session’? Is that like a bender?” queried Moose who to this point had been rather absorbed it discussing the spring turkey hunt he was planning.
Pickle settled back and started the lesson.
“To properly taste a wine, after the proper time you uncork the bottle, let it breathe a bit, and decant a smallish- not too small- portion into a crystal glass. Then you raise it to your lips and breathe in the aroma, ‘tasting’ all the subtle aromatics. Next you sip a swig and roll it around in your mouth to pick up all the delicate flavours like perhaps black cherry, or cinnamon, or raspberry. Finally you spit the sample into a bucket.”
“Spit it out! Good wine! I always suspected you were crazy, now I know it for sure!” exploded Moose, leaping up from his chair, chugging the balance of his coffee and storming out of the Bakery, muttering about darned ‘fools’. The blast of snow- the light flurry had turned into a blizzard- didn’t even slow him down.
“Well we do taste it, but earlier rather than later. Made a batch of orange wine and it was awful,” shuddered Scrounger at the memory.
“Enough to puke a pig! Had to throw it out. Hope it didn’t poison any wildlife,” he added.
So it appears a little good wine is a spring tonic to cure what ails you. The robins are getting hammered on the fermented apples hanging on the trees and look how it makes them sing.
Other songbirds have been known to fill their Tylenol bottles with a few ounces of their favourite to take along to the choir. Helps to clear the vocal chords between hymns and hit those high notes.