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I bottled another five gallons of wine the other night. This time I blended 2.5 gallons of the same Quincy cabernet sauvignon with 2.5 gallons of merlot from the Milbrandt vineyard. Blending wines is a good part of the fun of wine making. Cabernet sauvignon and merlot are the main grapes used in French Bordeaux. A classic Bordeaux is generally made of about 60 percent cabernet sauvignon, 35 percent merlot and 5 percent cabernet franc.
Carlene Anders and Gene Dowers of Pateros just finished a tour of the Columbia and Snake rivers. By boat.The kind of boat you have to row.
They came by The World’s newsroom Monday fishing for a little pub. They must have known I’m a sucker for long-distance quests. (See Nimblewill, Roz)
Anders and Dowers rowed for 25 days, raising money for March of Dimes. They started on the Columbia at the Canadian border, headed south to Kennewick and then “hung a left,” as Dowers put it, rowing upstream on the Snake to Pullman.
The March of Dimes is taking donations. Why did they do it? Their now-healthy son, Danny, was a preemie. And they also rowed the river route when they were first married.
Yesterday, my sister, sister-in-law and I held a baby shower for my other sister-in-law, Kristi. She and my brother are expecting twins in October (maybe sooner.) My task was, of course, making some edible stuff for the shower-goers. Chocolate-covered strawberries were requested and so was a drink called Mocha Punch. At the shower yesterday, the Mocha punch was the first thing to go.
The first time I tasted Mocha Punch was at the wedding of my brother and Kristi. Almost everyone there raved about it. It turns out the punch was made by Kristi’s mother, Kathy. I don’t know where she got it from, but it’s really good. She happily shared the recipe with us. I hope she doesn’t mind that I’m sharing it here. It’s just too good to keep secret.
It’s no wonder everyone in my family liked the punch. It is sort of like a partially-melted mocha milkshake.
6 cups water
1/2 cup chocolate drink mix
1/2 sugar
1/4 cup instant coffee
1/2 gallon vanilla ice cream
1/2 gallon chocolate ice cream
1 cup whipping cream
Chocolate curls
Boil 2 cups water and add chocolate drink mix, sugar and instant coffee. Mix well and refrigerate overnight or until cool. Add the other 4 cups water, stir. Scoop in vanilla and chocolate ice creams. Stir into mixture until partially melted. Beat cream until whipped and add, with chocolate curls on top, as a garnish.
Serves 20 to 25
Here are a few stories coming this week:
Apple Commission — The Apple Commission put its top official on administrative leave. We’ll be working to understand the why behind this story.
Election stories — Michelle McNiel is reporting on the races for Chelan and Douglas county commissions. While the rest of the local primary ticket is deader than dead, these two races offer up some interesting choices. Ballots go out in the mail this week.
Wolves — If you looked at reader comments at The Wenatchee World over the last few days, you’d have seen a lot of debate over whether wolves attack people. With the discovery of wolves in Okanogan County, this is no longer an academic question for us. Wildlife officials are working on a wolf reintroduction plan that includes a public education program about wolves and humans. But the wolves arrived before the plan was done. K.C. Mehaffey is reporting this story.
Chumstick trees — Tree stories seem to come in bunches. We had a piece this past week about plans to cut down trees at East Wentchee’s city hall. This week we hear that Chelan County is taking a look at cutting down trees along Chumstick Highway to improve roadway safety. Some residents aren’t happy.
I’ve stayed up late the past few nights bottling some of the 2006 harvest reds I’ve had aging in five gallon carboys in the basement. I transfer the new wine in carboys right after primary fermentation and put them into the cool basement to let the yeast complete the slow, final conversion of natural sugars to alcohol. That usually takes a few months, but I prefer to keep the wine in the carboys for a year or two, racking the wine from one jug to another every few months to give it a little air, and adding oak chips to simulate storage in the French oak barrels I can neither afford or have room for.
Bottling is an exciting time. All that previous work and waiting seems to have some point when you can see the rich burgundy color flowing into bottles. Of course I’m prone to sip in celebration. But there’s a lot of work involved in the process, satisfying, yes, but hard on the back all the same.
Part of the problem is that I’m phenomenally cheap. I use only recycled wine bottles and recycled corks to keep my costs down. Plus, I’m a dedicated if not obsessive recycler. This requires me to open my wine bottles with a special two-prong cork puller so as not to damage the corks. I save the bottles and gather others from friends. I soak the bottles — a couple dozen at a time — in a weak solution of TSP to remove the old labels, but it still requires the use of steel scrubbers, knives and elbow grease. Those metallic looking labels on Australian wines seem to be the hardest to remove. The bottles are thoroughly rinsed out afterwards and then placed in my Bosch diswasher which uses very hot water. I can get enough 750 mm bottles in a wash to fill two cases of wine. That’s perfect for a five-gallon carboy. If I’m lucky I get 25 bottles and a couple glasses to drink while I work.
The corks get thrown in a pot of water on the stove to which I’ve added about a teaspoon of sodium metabisulfite as a sterilant. Real corks are much better than the plastic ones. Corks get recycled once, then I throw them away.
I’ve developed a bottling system that works well for me. At a thrift store, I found a ceramic pot that is used to hold an upturned five-gallon bottle of drinking water. It has a spigot on the bottom. I can upend my wine carboys into this and fill my sterilized wine bottles one by one without making a mess or exposing the wine to much air. I use a two-handled corker to insert the steamed corks that go in very easy.
I bottled five gallons of cabernet sauvignon the first night. This was wine I made from part of a batch of grapes I purchased with two other amateur winemakers from Ryan Patrick Vineyards in Quincy. In previous years, my cabernet sauvignon grapes have come from Milbrandt Vineyards in Mattawa. Both vineyards have produced award winning wines. Milbrandt, with more than 1,000 acres of vineyard, sells grapes to dozens of premium Washington wineries.
Vineyard location and grape quality is the essence of good wine. You can’t make good wine without good grapes although even the best grapes can be made into bad wine. There are many pitfalls, several of which I have personal knowledge. What makes this whole venture possible for me is the abundance of excellent Washington grapes available. Quality grapes have been selling for about 65 cents a pound the past few years. One hundred pounds of grapes will make about seven gallons of wine. In theory, for about $2, I can make a wine as good as one that sells for $20 or more in the store. At least that’s my goal.
Ok, I thought the day was over.
But I get home, pick up The World and reread the story on the Washington Apple Commission placing its president on administrative leave.
The reason?
Our story doesn’t say, and that bugs me.
According to our story:
Board Chairman Cragg Gilbert says he can’t talk: It’s a personnel matter.
President Dave Carlson, the target of the board action, says he doesn’t know.
But somebody knows what’s up. Give me a ring at 665-1161.
Any help you can give the reporter who will be tracking this one down will be much appreciated.
Sometimes you have to wonder if a band makes the kind of sound it does just so that it can’t be defined.
That’s how I feel about the Flobots. Imagine locking Cake and Eminem in a room together with the string section of a symphony orchestra. That’s the best way I can think of describing what you get with this group. It’s like what Linkin Park tries to be, but only succeeds at mediocrely (it’s a real word, the dictionary told me so).
The band’s been around for several years now, and I’d heard of them before. However, it wasn’t until this year’s album, “Fight with Tools,” that I listened to them. You may have heard “Handlebars,” the record’s first single. On the track, lead singer Johnny 5 (cute, I love the “Short Circuit” reference) raps deftly along to horns and strings, and it pretty well demonstrates what to expect from the rest of the record, and most likely what you can expect at their Bumbershoot performance next month. Though the rapping is nothing to shout about, the instrumentation makes the band well worth a listen.
The Flobots are performing on the Exhibition Hall Stage at 6 p.m. Monday, Sept. 1.
I know it’s a commercial. I know it’s not really on point for anything. But it’s been a long week and this video (the soundtrack, really) makes me laugh. Time for the weekend.
Dino Rossi was in town this week and spoke to a Farm Bureau gathering.
The Democrats sent someone with a camera to record the speech at Kirby Billingsley Hydro Park. The Republicans or Farm Bureau apparently didn’t want it recorded.
Here’s a video, produced and posted by Democrats. What do you think?
Wednesday night was designated as cherry-jam-making night at my house. My brother, Enrique, had extra cherries from his father-in-law’s orchard and was hoping I’d help in his quest for year-round cherry goodness. I was happy to oblige.
I learned to make cherry jam last year after writing this article about Margarita Sarmiento and her annual mid-summer jam-making day. I worked with Margarita’s brother, Octavio, at my family’s fruit stand for several years and he would always tell me about how he and his sister would spend a day making all sorts of jams. I love making apricot jam, mainly because apricot jam is my favorite flavor, but I had never heard of sweet cherry jam. I was eager to learn and share.
Jams are really quick to make. OK, it’s not really quick, but it’s quicker than you might imagine. It goes so much more smoothly if you have everything ready to go. Enrique suggested pulsing the pitted cherries in my food processor instead of halving or quartering them. I’ve got to remember to do that in the future. It was easily one of the best ideas of the night. It made for a smoother, thicker jam.
Yesterday, we still had a few left-over cherries after making jam, so I decided to try my hand at making a Pavlova. It’s, basically, a meringue cake. My friend and coworker, Brianne, made one last summer after reading this article and brought it into work. It was so good. And it had cherries on top. It looked like that LA Times photo to your left. Just beautiful.
I ran across an Associated Press article for Pavlova a couple of months ago, this time chocolate berry Pavlova. So, because I only had six eggs, not eight, and I wanted to try something new, I made the chocolate one. However, instead of using berries on top, I tried cherries. I still haven’t eaten it yet, because it needed to cool. Also, it looks a little unfluffy. Brianne’s was nice and fluffy. I might have screwed it up. Or maybe the recipe was flawed. It did call for a lower oven temperature and fewer eggs. No matter, It should still taste good. How could it not?
Last night, while the Pavlova I was making was in the oven, I found pinking shears and a stack of fabric pieces to make our jam look cute. I love it when those home-canned jams, jellies and fruits in the pantry are all cute and decorated. I’ll post a photo later in the day.
Click “more” for the pavlova recipe I used:
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