For the first time in ages, all of the Pierce kids, Allie, Jake, and Adam, home at the same time. Betty and Jake's friend Charli came, too. It was a great Thanksgiving, and yes, it did involve a little wine and a little food.
We bottled Joe and Barb's loquat wine. This wine is very interesting. The fruit comes from Joe and Barb's loquat tree to the north of their house. Jeanna and Charlie helped pick the fruit, and Barb carefully packaged the frozen loquats and shipped them so that they arrived in perfect shape.
When thawed and fermenting, loquat wine smells unmistakably like amaretto. That is why some recipes call for the addition of almonds in the secondary. The amaretto smell fades however, and by the time this wine was a couple of months old, unfortunately, the smell was gone. I was left with a decent wine which was very troublesome to clear. Time did the trick, and finally, at 16 months, it was ready for tweaks and bottling.
The tweaks were centered on restoring that amaretto smell the loquat had early on. I bench tested almond extract and backsweetened, but finally settled on simply flavoring it with a tiny bit of amaretto liqueur...just enough to pick up the smell and hopefully no extra bitterness. I figured that it was justified since after all, amaretto is Italian.
We also finally got around to my 5 gallons of white catawba. This was hand made straight from grapes from the Books vineyard down the road. This wine was challenging, however, because by the time Lisa and I got there to pick the ends of the rows, the grapes are a little past their prime, as the pH was a ridiculous 2.93. What I should have done was adjust the pH right at the beginning. I didn't know better, and I forged ahead, pressing the grapes and fermenting off of the skins for a straight white wine.
It was sharp! So I tweaked. In an effort to get some balance, I backsweetened it a lot. I also gave it a tropical twist with a slight infusion of passionfruit in an attempt to counter the foxiness. In the end, it came out pretty good. It won't be a wine for pasta meals. More likely a wine for spritzers and spicy Asian food.
We experimented with food as well. We had the usual Pierce Thanksgiving dinner with turkey, dressing, strawberry jello, and 7-layer salad. With the leftovers, we tried a new breakfast idea. Leftover stuffing is pressed into a muffin tin to make a thick crust. Then an egg is cracked into the center. We topped with leeks and cheddar cheese. Bake for about 20 minutes or until the egg white is cooked. Excellent. Happy Thanksgiving.
