Had our Christmas with what is left of our family Sunday less our sister Florence who is currently in a nursing home...in Anderson Indiana, we all went in one car...Days past the drive ways would be choked with cars and the houses we held it in would be bulging at the sides to contain it all...times change and families get older and smaller...such is ours but we carry on the tradition of gathering together for a meal and maybe some good wine or Manhattan's or some good old slush even...The great dinner my sister had prepared was wonderful complimented by her two daugters who also live there in Anderson serving us, so "mom", could just relax with the rest of us.
But this years event was special because 1...... my life is again filled with love and 2.....the lost recipe has been found....Love makes you happy once again to be alive, does not erase beautiful memories, but it brings forth a rebirth of excitement with life in general...it is especially good if you both feel enough love for each other that you would, if you could, wish that what happened to the other could be reversed, and that life could again be as it was...but knowing full well it can not, not feeling guilty about capturing and enjoying the new bond found between us...it is good....it is very good.
So let me share our Christmas tree, our favorite fire place and my family and my new hero my sister Peg...she is my hero this day as she has found what we all thought was lost forever...the recipe for the wine our father used to make each summer...a few years back I got to thinking about maybe taking up wine making and making it as good as my dad used to every summer....he would make about 20 gallons plus each August when our concord grapes would ripen...I think I may have written about stomping grapes in another story on this blog...Anyway a few years back I started inquiring about the recipe...no one had it....I had given up hope for ever finding it...was pretty well pissed off that we had allowed it to be lost but, we won't go there....But Sunday my new hero sister (wine a bit) Peg handed me a recipe card from her file and said, "hey Jack I found this in my recipe box".... I read it quickly and the last thing on the recipe was "fill with water daily to replace what has fermented out the top"....I knew then it was it...it has to be it, as is the last thing we did in the process each summer was to go into the wood shed and watch the purple bubbles boil out of the keg and run down the sides...then add enough water each day to fill it to the top to continue the purification process.....and then it would finally quit, and dad would say it is done fermenting, and we would then cap the wine keg and move it to the basement...that fall my father would finally tap it and serve the wine to us all..it was fabulous...probably 20 plus percent alchohol maybe, I don't know... I do know it had a kick to it...and it was most always as clear a water..even though made from purple concord grapes....
So I now have it again.. thank you sister Peg for finally finding what had been long lost and I thought was lost forever...To me it is a big deal..because it was very special wine...I remember time an time again people telling my dad that it was the best wine they had ever tasted in their life...and asking him how it was that it would be clear as drinking water but yet be made from purple grapes??????
Well next summer we will find out...Currently I am searching for the "just right" oak barrel...will also try a glass container maybe but he did it in an Oak barrel so that I must have...I know where there are some concord grapes that are cuttings from the old grapes that my father used that originally came from Germany....I planted them and I know they will share them with me..especially if I offer to trim the grapes for them next spring as I watched my father do each year...I doubt this every grows into a Sweet Pea Winery or anything like that.. but it will be fun to try, looking forward to it and to a Happy New Year....
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