Carambola Chips

If I had more starfruit, and carambola wine weren't so good, I'd make these all the time.  Slice them thinly and liberally dose half of them with chili powder before putting them in the oven.

2 firm-ripe carambola 
2 cups sugar
2 cups water

Slice star fruit crosswise with slicer into 1/16-inch-thick slices.
Bring sugar and water to a boil in a 2-quart heavy saucepan, stirring until sugar is dissolved. Add star fruit, then remove from heat and let stand, uncovered, 15 minutes. Pour star fruit into a sieve set over a bowl and drain 15 minutes. 
Put oven rack in middle position and preheat oven to 200°F. Put liner on a large (17- by 11-inch) baking sheet, then arrange star-fruit slices in 1 layer on liner (discard extra along with any broken slices). Bake until dry, 1 to 1 1/4 hours. Immediately transfer chips to a rack to cool.

Chocolate Pudding Fruit, Chapter 1

I had never eaten the fruit of Diospyros nigra before today.  It's name gives an indication of the typical persimmon fruit lifecycle - astringent and bitter when unripe, soft and sweet when ripe.

I cut the first and only fruit from my tree last week when it started to turn from green to brown.  I patiently waited until the fruit was entirely brown and the flesh started to "give."

I cut it open and was pleased to see the chocolate pudding colored flesh inside.

I grabbed a spoon.  The flesh is still very firm, almost rubbery.  The taste is anything but chocolate.  I suppose I should congratulate myself for waiting long enough that any bitterness and astringency was gone.  But my first and only chocolate pudding fruit tastes a lot like an unripe pear.

The trees are supposed to be heavy bearers.  We'll what next year brings.

Chocolate and Blueberry

We kicked off two new brews this weekend.  I'll call them brews because one is not truly a wine - Chocolate Mead.

Each batch I make involves some research, and I found that chocolate mead recipes range from cocoa preferment to Hershey's Syrup postferment.  I went with the former.  I heat pasteurized the honey, added 8 ounces by weight of Hershey "Special Dark Chocolate" cocoa, and after much reading and hand wringing about pH in meads, went with no adjustments to the pH of 5.99.

We'll leave this on the cocoa lees for 2-3 months.  It is said to take 2 years for the bitterness of the cocoa to settle down.  I see why some would choose the Hershey's Syrup route.

The second batch is a second run blueberry hibiscus wine.  I saved the fruit/skins/pulp from my blueberry wine earlier this fall.  I thawed it and simmered it in a gallon of water.

Then in the primary I put the usual hibiscus flowers, a can of red grape concentrate, and sugar.

Then poured the blueberry water (with the bag) into the primary and gave it a good mix.  The kitchen smells like baked bread.  But the must is surprisingly fruity, with excellent deep purple color.

The plan is to let this cool, add OptiRed and pectic, then adjust the OG and pH and pitch the yeast in the morning.

Thanksgiving 2015

The kids were home for Thanksgiving, along with Bob and Sharon.  We took a couple of hours and got the greenhouse tucked in.  Lychee should have gotten the necessary chill hours over the past 2-3 weeks.  Citrus is ripening.  We've got a handful each of calamondin, Meyer lemon, and kumquats.  

The grapefruit are the size of olives.  And the chocolate pudding fruit (Diospyros nigra) is the size of a tennis ball yet hard as a rock and split.

In an hour we got the insulation up.  In a second hour we chased the calves out the the yard and repaired the fence. That was the extent of the work done over the weekend.

Adam has become a photographer, and the good pictures are almost certainly his.

We didn't stray far from the standard fare...turkey, stuffing, strawberry jello, seven-layer salad.

We made as much wine as we drank and we sent Sharon home with another dozen bottles, different varieties and styles.

Plateau of Productivity

The Hype Cycle is a graphical representation of technology adoption and diffusion. The part of this graph I most like to point out is the "Trough of Disillusionment." Companies have to recognize this point in a product or project lifecycle and push through it.

I was standing there looking at a dozen carboys yesterday and thinking I've been through this same cycle with winemaking. I had some early successes which led to inflated expectations. Then failures led to some disillusionment. Study and practice and a lot of bad wine pushed me up the Slope of Enlightenment. Yesterday I looked at a dozen carboys, confident that not one of them has undrinkable wine, I felt as if I'm approaching the Plateau of Productivity.

For Thanksgiving the family is home, including my parents. The Elderberry Persimmon wine Wednesday was a big hit, both in terms of taste and in terms of photogenicity.

We moved the blackberry-elderberry to secondary and kicked off the second run elderberry. Grandma Sharon helped with this batch. For Thanksgiving dinner we finished a bottle of last year's second run elderberry. This wine was bottled dry and came out terrific - fruity with strawberry and raspberry elements and beautiful ruby color. This wine cleared on it's own and was bottled after 9 months.  Here is the recipe.

Elderberry - seeds, skins, and pulp leftover from 2 16# 3 gal batches
3# bananas
3 cans Welch's white grape concentrate
4# 14oz sugar
GoFerm
Fermaid K
3t pectic enzyme
5t citric acid
1t tartaric acid

Place elderberry pulp in nylon straining bag in primary; add sugar and grape concentrate. Slice bananas, simmer, strain into primary.  Add boiling water to 3 gallons.  When cool, stir in acids, pectic enzyme.  Pitch yeast starter with EC-1118, step feed, kmeta when into secondary, usual care thereafter.  

Preserving a little bit of Arkansas

On Highway 65 heading south toward Conway, just past the Serenity Farm Bakery, there appears a sign every fall for Arkansas Black apples.  We've stopped many times at the bakery, but never for the apples, and we are running out of time.  But a patient last year generously gave us a large bag of Arkansas Blacks.  He said they will keep for weeks, if not months, if just left in a cool garage.

We left them out for about a month, but I became fearful of them rotting, so I threw them all in the freezer where they have sat for about a year.

But now I have a new toy.  Blame the blackberries.  The straight fruit blackberry came up short of 3 gallons, partially because of the fluffy lees from the bentonite, but mostly because I basically only had the free run, I couldn't press the fruit. That will not be an issue going forward.

For the apples, this press worked like a charm.  A 5 gal paint strainer bag fits perfectly in the basket and it is disposable.  This wine will be straight-fruit apple.  I came up just a little shy of 1 gallon in terms of volume, so I added 1 can apple juice concentrate and 12 ounces of water.  The OG was 1.060 and pH 3.51.  9oz sugar brought the OG to 1.085, which seems right for this wine.  Here is the recipe:

2 3gal bags Arkansas Black apples (sorry, didn't get the weight)
1 can apple juice concentrate with 12 oz water (for volume)
9oz sugar
1 Campden tab
1t yeast nutrient, divided
1/4tsp tannin
2t pectic enzyme
2g bentonite
2g Optiwhite
71B yeast

Press the frozen/thawed apples and add the juice to the primary.  Add the concentrate, water, sugar, Kmeta.  Wait 12 hours, add the pectic, tannin, Optiwhite.  Wait another 12 hours, add 1/2 of the nutrient and pitch the yeast.  Day 3 add the bentonite.  When 1/2 sugar is depleted, add the second 1/2t nutrient.  To secondary around 1.010 and usual care thereafter.

We made a tasty flatbread appetizer on Friday, with caramelized onion, fig, walnuts, and balsamic truffle glaze.

Inspired Saturday

Inspiration comes from many different sources, and sometimes from no particular source at all. Saturday didn't seem particularly suited to work in the kitchen but that is the way it turned out. Breakfast was a crustless egg dish baked in serving sized Lodge cast iron serving pans we found a few years back.

Serves 2
2 sticks celery
2 handfuls of spinach, chopped
2T chopped onion
1T chopped roasted red pepper
seasoning salt
4 eggs
Cheddar cheese

Saute the celery and onion.  When translucent, mix in spinach and pepper.  Divide between two Lodge mini pans.  Beat the eggs with the salt, pour over the veggies, and top with cheddar cheese. Bake 25-30 min or til the eggs pull slightly away from the sides.

Imagine this cast iron pan filled with eggs and veggies

Next up, elderberry wine. The recipe has not been finalized, but this batch dials back the fruit to just under 15# in a 3 gallon batch, and it uses 80% tartaric, 20% citric acid. Today we thawed and simmered the fruit, assembled the must, and put it in the fridge for a 3 day cold soak.  I'm going to double check the acid measurments on this one.  I was aiming for TA around 7 and pH 3.5. According to my first set of calculations, I got a TA 6.6 and pH 3.37.  The plan is to ferment this on heavy toast American oak chips starting Wednesday.

15# of elderberries

The best elderberry wine recipe I've found online, oddly, doesn't come from a winemaking site, but instead it comes from a food blog, Hunter-Angler-Gardner-Cook by Hank Shaw.  I'm not a hunter and the site is heavy on waterfowl recipes, but the site is worth some time.  Inspired by this recipe, we're making elderberry liqueur.

1 pint elderberries
1 quart vodka
1 3" x 1/4" strip of Meyer lemon rind (from the greenhouse)
1/4-1/3 cup sugar

Combine elderberries, vodka, lemon rind in a quart jar.  Leave for 1 month, shaking occasionally. Filter, then add sugar and bottle.

We were on a roll.  Next up, limoncello.  Limoncello recipes on the web vary widely in terms of the base alcohol (everything from 80 proof vodka to Everclear) and ratio of alcohol to lemons. I found some inspiration in this recipe using vanilla from an abandoned blog called That Jew Can Cook.  The website has links to some interesting YouTube videos, including one, seemingly done without any irony, on Halal street food.

10 lemons (smallish)
1 lime
1 orange
1/3 vanilla bean (I got burned by vanilla once, OK?)
80 proof vodka
Simple syrup

Combine all ingredients in a quart mason jar.  Leave for 1 month, shaking occasionally.  Filter, add simple syrup, bottle.

Our patients have over the last several days given us several butternut squash. Lunch was a delicious, creamy, flavorful butternut squash soup.  I cut the cream cheese in half.

It is the holiday season. Coming full circle means digging into the last of our frozen fruitcakes and kicking off the new batch by getting this year's fruit in the rum to macerate.  We'll be baking cakes tomorrow.

Michigan won big, so we celebrated with a marinated flat iron steak, roasted sweet potatoes, and lemon-pepper-locally-grown green beans.  The wine is 2012 Penalolen Cab.

Frittata Time

I won't lie, I love bacon. But in light of recent media reports, we've been cutting back on our processed meat.  So when a patient brought us butternut squash this week, I thought it would be a good time to experiment. The result was a tasty frittata dinner.

Peel one butternut squash, then cube it.  Put a little walnut oil in a cast iron skillet, and toss with the roughly 2 cups of squash.  Roast 20 min at 400 degrees.  Then mash the squash with a fork into a layer in the bottom of the skillet. Add a thick layer of chopped spinach and a handful of chopped walnuts.  Then beat 6 eggs and add about 1/2 tsp seasoning salt, and pour that into the skillet over the spinach.  Back in the oven at 400 degrees for another 20 minutes.

This was a terrific dish. We added a wine club bottle, a 2013 Saint Gregory Pinotrois, a nice, smooth, medium bodied red wine.  Good evening.

Bob Ross is like Crack

Twitch is streaming all 400 hours of Bob Ross and The Joy of Painting. This is addictive stuff.  I am finding it hard to turn off.

Five Thirty Eight did a statistical analysis of his work and 91% of his paintings contained at least one tree.  Bob Ross is pretty good at painting trees.   This evening I watched him paint an "old tired tree," and it was asymmetric and lonely and beautiful.

I have a tree like this in my yard.  It is Diospyros virginiana, American Persimmon. It is solitary, large, crooked, and old. And it is a little tired. But it faithfully produces persimmons every year.  I have gathered hundreds of pounds of these persimmons. I have progeny growing nearby, in and around the pawpaws. Most of the persimmons I have gathered have gone toward futile attempts at persimmon wine.

Today, Lisa and I made persimmon cookies. The effort was much more successful than persimmon wine. Baking soda does strange and cool things to persimmon pulp.

We found a recipe with dates, which strikingly resemble chocolate chips.  These are terrific cookies, and there are enough persimmons left on the tree to get another batch or two.

We found some fresh salmon in town and had a nice supper of salmon with a roasted red pepper sauce, spinach salad, and cookies.

I'm feeling as relaxed as Bob Ross.

Fall Winemaking is Underway

The sauerkraut went into the fridge after 5 days of fermentation.  It is chunky and crisp with enough acidity.

We are home for the first weekend in a couple of months. This provided the opportunity to catch up on some winemaking. I bottled the elderberry-persimmon wine. This wine is unique for the large dose of bentonite and heavy toast oak chips in the primary, then a secondary treatment of some black currants. I think it is very good at 8 months, and it is supposed to improve for a couple of years.

We racked the starfruit and lychee wine.  The starfruit wine is not quite clear but will, once again, be fantastic.  I think we have the starfruit wine recipe dialed in pretty well. Getting the pH low enough with mostly citric acid is the key. No malic acid for this wine, acid blend or otherwise. The lychee wine unfortunately blew off all of the lychee aromas during fermentation. I anticipated this, and kept back 15 large lychees from the greenhouse.  These were thawed, destoned, chopped, treated for several hours with pectic enzyme, then added to the secondary. I expect a wine that is subtle but distinctly lychee.

We then kicked off the first of the fall batches.  This one is blackberry.  We are going with (almost) straight fruit. It is said that it normally takes about 11-12# for a gallon.  I had 29.5#, just under 10# per gallon for the 3 gallon batch.

To make up the volume I did use about 4 pints of water. I have some of last year's blackberry wine to top off with if the volume is still short.  The initial pH was 2.79 and it took 7t of calcium carbonate to get it to the desired 3.4.  Sugar calculations were perfect, we're starting at 1.084. I let the pectic work a full 24 hours. 71B will hopefully tame some of the malic acid.

Shawn and Suzanne came over for supper.  We had a nice veggie-based chili, then Suzanne make a delicious apple galette.  I was a poor host.

Spot the veggies?

Apple Galette.

Here is my recipe for 3 gal of carambola wine.

16# carambola
1 liter white grape concentrate
Sugar: 3# (SG 1.082)
Campden: 2 tab at start
Yeast nutrient: 3/4t Fermaid K divided
Yeast energizer: 1t GoFerm
Tannin: 1/2t
Pectic enzyme: 3t
Citric acid: 6t  (starting pH was 3.27)
Tartaric acid: 3t
Opti white: 6g (dose 1-2g/gal)
Water: 2gal
Yeast: QA23

Add Campden tablets at fruit thaw.  Bag the sliced fruit.  Add bagged fruit, grape concentrate, sugar to primary.  Boil water, pour over primary.  When cool, add Optiwhite, pectic, acids, and wait 12-24 hours. Double check pH and adjust if needed.  Rehydrate yeast with GoFerm and pitch.  Step feed the Fermaid K. Stir twice a day.  Bentonite on day 3.  Drip drain bag and rack to primary when 1.010 or lower.  Usual care thereafter.

Sauerkraut

The soccer season is coming to an end.  The regular season didn't come out as we had hoped, but Hendrix ended on a positive note with win on Senior Day.  Jake had the equalizer on a blistering free kick.  Lisa had tears.

We will soon be home for the weekend again, and so we'll soon be back to winemaking.  There are bags upon bags of fruit in the freezer.  First however, we're trying our hand at a different type of fermentation: kraut.

I used 1.5T of sea salt for the 1 large head of cabbage. It took longer to get water out of the cabbage than I thought it would, but eventually it was completely submerged in the brine.

We'll give three days then try a taste.

Hibiscus Ginger Wine

This wine has aged really well.  I bottled it 10/20/2013, and the last time we tried a bottle, it was off-color and a little too viscous.  Now it is bright and red, fruity and balanced, with good body and enough ginger to keep it interesting.

Here is the recipe for 3 gallons:

480 dried hibiscus flowers (Hibiscus rosa-sinensis)
3 cans Welch's concentrate
2T ginger paste (not in the bag)
5# 2oz sugar
3t yeast nutrient
3/4t tannin
5.5t acid blend
4t citric acid
28 pints of water
Lalvin K1-V1116

OG was 1.088. pH was 3.39.  Combine sugar and water and bring to boil.  Put flowers in mesh bag, put in primary.  Pour sugar-water over flowers.  Add other ingredients except yeast.  When cool, remove bag, squeeze lightly and discard.  Add yeast, stirring daily.  When down to around 1.010, move to secondary.  Rack per usual.  This wine was stabilized and backsweetened with 50g sugar/gallon along with about 5ml glycerin/gal.  The glycerin is probably not needed.

No cooking tonight, as we are headed to Alabama in the morning.

Oh yeah.  Go Blue.

Starting Over with Vegetables

My original plan for the greenhouse was to grow summer vegetables in the winter. Fresh salsa in February. I did that, barely. One year, with lots of effort, I managed a couple of tomatoes and some cilantro. I can't recall if I grew the lime in the greenhouse; I'm pretty sure I cheated on the onions. But it was salsa and it was February and we ate it.
With that mission accomplished, I gave up on tomatoes in the greenhouse. They don't grow that well in the cold, they require extra light, and they're whitefly magnets. For many years, the greenhouse has been dedicated to tropical plants, mainly tropical fruits. But this year we decided to we decided to clear some space and try some vegetables again.  Saturday we cleared that space.

Jasmine 'Belle of India'

Stephanotis floribunda

The greenhouse has a terrific smell in the mornings these days. It could be the Stephanotis floribunda, which has long outgrown it's little trellis but which I can't quite bear to pull down off of the fan conduit.  More likely the fragrance is Jasmine 'Belle of India'. It is nice enough out there that we can tolerate the noise from the obnoxious cows outside. I am close to taking action on the cattle.

There are a number of things in the greenhouse producing small numbers of blooms and fruit. One orchid is complete confused about bloom times.

'Kari' has rebounded very nicely and it looks like we'll continue to get Carambola wine for the foreseeable future.

We have our best crop of Miracle Fruit (Synsepalum dulcificum) yet. What kind of sick person considers making Miracle Fruit wine?

My goal has for years been one new fruit per year. For the second year in a row, we have met that goal. Last year was a feast of new fruit. This year's entry is the Phalsa Berry, Grewia asiatica. The fruit is also known as Sherbet Berry. It is an odd little fruit, about the size of a blueberry, purple in color, but with a stippled, almost hairy skin and a texture that is a little mealy. It grows a little too well in the greenhouse and will need to be pruned back pretty hard this fall.

Triphasia trifolia is a citrus relative which makes a fuit known as a limeberry. I have a few of these in the freezer, and I intent to use them in my "Varieta tropica" wine along with the Phalsa Berry and other odds and ends. This plant, along with Psidium myrtoides, adamantly refuses to become a tree, preferring instead to drape its prickly branches out and down below the pot and onto the ground. Lisa undertook the challenging job of repotting both plants. She also tackled a couple of the Rollinias, the yellow jabotica (Myrciaria glomerata), and others, and they all came out great.

The lemongrass in the south end of the greenhouse has served as the source for many gallons of tasty lemongrass wine, but it was overgrown and unruly. I pulled out two stands of the lemongrass, cut them back severely, and replanted. This should make room for a small stand of veggies. The yield ended up being around 2 pounds of lemongrass, and I have no open carboys. So I offered it to my friend Rebekah and she accepted.  Hopefully Bek's can do something nice with the stuff, otherwise it was compost.

Future home of spinach and cilantro

We went to the store to be sure we bought some seeds before they put everything away for the season, then came home and had some cocktails. The best was the Sky Pilot, made with Arron's homemade Applejack moonshine.  Tasty!

Lining them up

Friday I went back for what likely will be the last of my elderberry runs this year.  It was brutal. Weeds 6' high, flies, horseflies, and of course I forgot my pruners, making getting through the wild blackberries a challenge.  Final pickin' totals:

• Blueberry 3.5#
• Blackberry 42#
• Elderberry 22.5#

The birds are finally leaving the elderberries in the yard alone long enough for them to truly ripen.  I may get another pound from the yard.  So the plan is as follows:

• Elderberry 16# (3 gal)
• Blackberry/Elderberry blend 10#/6# (3 gal)
• Blackberry 16# (3 gal)
• Blackberry/Elderberry Rosé with skins/seeds from first 3 batches (3 gal)
• Blueberry/Blackberry 3.5#/3# + whatever elderberries I can yet get from the yard (1 gal)
• Blackberry 13# pure juice no water (1 gal)

I need to get some bottling done, as right now I have no open 3 gal carboys.  But the remaining 2014 elderberry wine, when racked this past week, is looking and tasting very nice.

One of the remaining 3 gal elderberry batches I still need to bottle.

This doesn't look like exercise equipment.

But this pressure washer extension has me sore on this Sunday.  We used it Saturday to get the mud daubers off of the ceiling of the lanai.  You don't really control it, you just sort of restrain it.  It reminds me of a slosh pipe.  This is a home maintenance tool I suppose I'll use for 30 minutes every 2-3 years but which has no substitute.  We're not considering a move, but I will be very happy to leave this monster with the lucky buyers of our home whenever that time comes.

Allie is getting settled in her new apartment.  We delivered the green Valium loveseat, so-named because it is so comfortable lying on it is like taking Valium. This required removal of the back door from its hinges.  We took the opportunity to stop by Lucky's and get some rosemary and garlic steak kabobs.  I cooked these perfectly but they were badly overseasoned.  Thanks, Lucky.  The 2013 blackberry mead was therefore a nice surprise.  I admit to have cheated a little bit on this one, but Lisa doesn't care.

Saturday Miscellany

Lisa and I made a trip to the Fulton farmer's market and picked up some of the first sweet corn of the season.  Tomatoes are coming along.  Our market has always been a little heavy on crafts and music and light on actual food.

Then we went back to Danamay Farm for some more u-pick berries.  The blueberries are finished, and the blackberries are not quite as plentiful as two weeks ago, but it didn't take us long to add another 7.5# of blackberries.

It is great to have Allison home, if even for a few days.  We took the opportunity Saturday to collect some Allison Elderberries.  The berries didn't progress as much as I thought they would in the past week, but we got about 8#.  I think we are up to around 13#.  My goal is 20#.  The plan will be 15# in a straight elderberry, 15# of blackberries in a straight blackberry, 5# elderberry + 10# blackberry in a blend, all using a cold soak.  Then, saving off the seeds/skins from these batches, I'll do a second run rosé.  Now I still need to figure out what to do with the blueberries.

The freezer is getting full!

Earlier this week we tried a 375ml bottle of the 2014 hibiscitrus wine.  This wine is over-the-top fruity and floral, a great summer wine.  So again, we are in full hibiscus-flower-collection mode.  Unfortunately one of the pots blew over in a storm a couple of weeks ago and broke.  Saturday I attempted a repair with some 2-part epoxy and a strap clamp.  I do it for the wine.

Lisa hates beets.  I'm not generally a fan...they are like the pineapple of the root vegetables in a way.  Just like pineapple doesn't share space in a fruit salad, beets don't share space in a roasting pan.  They turn everything purple and are just generally obnoxious.  But pickled beets, that might be a different thing entirely.  I made a go at pickled beets yesterday.

Pickled beets, with red onions for garnish

Finally, after about 5 years, it appears that this is really a thing.

Black sapote, chocolate pudding fruit

Lychees and Elderberries

At long last, we're making lychee wine.  My winemaking schtick originally was that I would grow the majority of the primary ingredient in each wine.  I've loosened that up a bit, and now the idea is that I grow an important portion of the primary ingredient in each wine.  I think this qualifies.

It took a bit of driving around with Shawn and Suzanne, but last weekend we found some canned lychee at an Asian market in Columbia.  My harvest this year was only about 15 fruit, but they are large, delicious 'Sweetheart' lychees, now frozen.

Lychee wine recipe

6 20oz cans of lychee

8oz fresh frozen 'Sweetheart' lychee

1 liter WGC

900g sugar

3/4t Fermaid K

1t GoFerm

3/4t tannin

4t pectic

1.5t citric acid

1.5t tartaric acid

QA23 yeast

6g bentonite

Add together the canned lychee, WGC, tannin, acids, sugar, and pectic.  Allow to sit 12-24 hours.  Check and adjust SG and pH/acid.  Rehydrate and pitch yeast.  Bentonite day 3.  Carboy when around 1.010.  Rack off gross lees after 1-2 weeks.  Rack at 30 days.  Thaw and lightly chop frozen lychees and add to carboy.  Rack again at 30 days and usual care thereafter.

This is basically the approach I took with my passionfruit wine...a "secondary infusion."  The lychee pH was 3.24 but TA a little low at 3.  I think my new WGC has less acid buffer than the old because the last two batches of wine needed far less acid to get to desired pH.  OG was fine at 1.080.  It may need a little more citric acid, we'll judge that after the third racking.  I moved it to the carboy after 6 days.

*****

Allie will be home next weekend from her internship in Washington, DC.  It will be great to hear more details about her adventure.  She enjoys being around people as passionate as she is.  

She will be home just in time to 1) sample last year's elderberry wine and 2) pick some more elderberries.  My elderberries have started to ripen and I have a few handfuls in the fridge.  But our big pickin' spot doesn't have too many ripe berries yet.

Last night Lisa and I popped open the first bottle of 2014 elderberry, batch 3.  Lisa was concerned about how many bottles we would have.  Between the four batches we have about 120 bottles of elderberry from last year so we were safe, in my judgment, opening a bottle last night. 

This wine is very good, just really young.  The color is terrific, so purple it has almost a blue color at times in the glass.  It is a little tart, and a little green peppery.  The tannin adjustments were right on.  I believe and hope this wine will settle down, the fruit will come forward in another several months.

Breaking convention, we had drank the elderberry with cedar-smoke-grilled chinook salmon and a mango-fennel-avocado salad.  Cheers!