Les Welcome
Whether by intent or tragic mis-typing, you’ve landed on the home of Les Garagistes winery collective. If you’re new to our dark cabal, a rich and heady stew of bad French grammar and subterranean winemaking awaits. But where to start? Here are a few suggestions:
- First, you might take a quick stroll through last year’s vintage escapades, accumulated over the two critical months of September 2009 and October 2009 (remember that the posts are presented with the earliest at the bottom of the page).
- Then, who are these Garagistes and where do they get off? And didn’t I hear they were dead?
- We sully the fine pages of Fine Cooking Magazine
- Winehenge: the movie. If that’s not enough to get you to click…
- A French oak barrel primer
- Red, Rex Sox (Yankees fans, be forewarned)
- Plastic capsules and why we switched to paper
- Lastly, mourn with the Moody Blues as they appear to lament the end of a Les Garagistes harvest.
Thanks much for stopping by. We’ve got fruit lined up for 2010 — with new varietals ensuring we’ll be making even more up as we go along — so another exciting vintage is just ahead. Hope you can join us for it, and let us know what you think of what we’ve cobbled together.
Dandelion Wine
First attempt failed because soaking the flowers at room temperature for more than a week makes the liquor go off. Second batch soaked in the fridge. Ferment has begun. It smells a little like artichoke. In case you were wondering, dandelion wine is a flavored sugar ferment with some added lemon juice. I presume the latter is for acidity. I have not make it before, or even tasted some, but it seems like it could end up tasting like a thin gewurztraminer.
1 Comment so far
Your excellent experiment reminds me of 2 things.
First is creaky old H.E. Bravery, the home winemaking impressario. I can’t remember if he had a dandelion wine recipe, but if he didn’t, it was because he was too busy fermenting everything else around his yard. I remember thinking old H.E. had a few too many shells explode near him during the London Blitz, but that he had enough of his wits left about him to coax fermentation out of virtually anything.
Second, and more important, it’s a harbinger:
Let the clouds part and the wine uncork!