I bottled my dandelion wine today. It had been settling and clearing for 3 and a half months and was looking nice and clear, so I figured it was time.

First step (after cleaning the bottle and all equipment) was to transfer the wine from the carboys into bottles.

Filling Bottles

It’s just transferring with a siphon. You put one end of the tube in the carboy and then suck on the other end until you get wine. Unlike siphoning gas, it’s an added bonus when you get a mouthful. Put the other end in your empty wine bottle and the wine flows. On the bottle end there’s a little gadget that when you lift the hose out of a full bottle it stops the flow until you press against the inside of the next bottle. Slick.

After the bottles are filled it’s time to cork them. In the good old days they pounded the cork in with a hammer. In these modern times I get out yet another gadget to cork the bottles.

Corker

You put the cork in the gadget and press the handles down and it pushes the cork into the bottle. It takes a pretty good push to seat the cork. If you’re not careful to keep yourself square to the bottle and push evenly, the whole contraption can go skittering across the counter with wine and profanity flying everywhere.

When buying store bought wine, I usually make my selections based on the attractiveness of the label. I’ll be sure to enjoy my dandelion wine more with a nice label.

An Attractive Label

Who could resist that bottle?

This is all very nice, but what about what really matters? How does it taste? Let’s find out.

Down the Hatch

Debbie said it tasted like drinking dandelion greens. Using winespeak you could say it is overly vegetal. Either one of those is a fairly accurate assessment. It’s not unpleasant to drink, at least if you like dandelion greens, but it definitely has too much green taste. I left the wine sit on dandelions about 6 days which must’ve been too much.

I can sum it up with a quote from the best movie ever, “quaffable but far from transcendent.”

Debbie and I have started writing a weekly column on buscovoice.com. If you’re one of the many who just can’t get enough of the witty, insightful, and often brilliant writing on zumbrun.net, check out our Two Farmers and a Fork at Local Columnists

I picked up a bottle of Kreibaum Bay Port made by Satek Winery (just north of here) at Wine Time (the best wine store in these parts, bar none).

It says on the label “a great wine to sip by the fire.”  Well, we sure have the weather for a fire

and we have the fire too.

Looks like we have all the elements aligned.  Cheers, friends!

I bottled my mead today.

If you can read the labels you can see it’s an orange and spice mead.  It’s a bit spicy for my taste, I’d use a little less spice (cinnamon and cloves) next time.  But it’ll make a nice spiced wine for the holidays.   It made 4 bottles, one is in the refrigerator to see how it tastes chilled.

It also packs a wallop.  I didn’t check the Brix before I fermented it, but from the taste I’d suspect I’m at 15%+ alcohol.

I harvested one frame from my beehive this week.

The hive setting is every bit as idyllic as the picture looks.  I built a bench to put out there by it and I like to sit there and watch the bees.  It’s very peaceful.

I harvested just one frame from the hive.  I don’t have a honey extractor, but I had read that you could just allow the honey to drain from the frame if you weren’t in a hurry.  I read that on the Internet, so I had no reason to doubt it.  Nonetheless I was skeptical.  Being skeptical and not wanting to have 9 frames of honey and no way to get the honey out, I just pulled one frame from the hive.

I took that one frame, uncapped it, put it over a shallow tray, and set it in the oven overnight so bugs and the cat wouldn’t crawl over it during the night.

Do you see where this tale is going?

Yes, sure enough, the next evening I flipped the oven on to preheat for supper.  A few minutes later the house was filling with the aroma of warm honey.  I lunged for the oven (and said a bad word), it had preheated to 250 degrees, and yanked the honey tray out.  The honey and beeswax and frame foundation was all well-extracted and had melted into a pool in the tray.  I poured it all through a fine sieve which took out out the wax and foundation and other unidentified bits.  The result was just over a quart of very nice honey.

Now what to do with it?  We don’t really use all that much honey so I decided to make mead.  I picked an orange and spice recipe that is supposed to be very forgiving.  A quart of honey is what you need for a gallon of mead, so here’s a gallon jug of honey, water, oranges, spices, and yeast perking away.

Within an hour of mixing it all up the yeast was working, bubbling furiously and turning that sugar into alcohol.  This recipe is supposed to take two months, just in time for a nice spiced wine for Christmas.

We went to Wine Time today in Jefferson Pointe for a wine tasting. They had the wine tasting set up outside (it’s 40 degrees, gray and rainy in the heartland today, the poor people staffing it…)

They had a nice selection to taste, I particularly liked the Valpolicella and Pinot Noir. They had clam chowder from Joseph Decuis and duck from Maple Leaf Farms for tasting too.

It was well attended while we were there, and it is just so good to see Jeff Armstrong and Wine Time succeeding.

Tomorrow is our anniverary and we always buy a bottle of wine to lay down to have in a future year and remember the times we’ve enjoyed together. Jeff recommended a Rioja to us, it’s now in the cellar, to see the light again in about 2012, when we’ll open it and remember all that happened 2006 and the wine tasting at Wine Time on a gray November day.

We visited R Bistro in Indianapolis for my birthday. It’s a chef owned, kitchen driven restaurant specializing in fresh locally produced food. Sort of like Chez Panisse in the heartland (only not quite so goofy).

The food was everything you’d expect from this sort of place. It’s not a prix-fixe menu, but they change the menu each week, and there are 5 appetizers, 5 main courses, and 5 desserts.

Our meals were splendid. I started with a watermelon and prosciutto appetizer.  Different from the usual combination of melon and prosciutto, the sweet crunchy watermelon was a nice contrast to the buttery smooth rich prosciutto.  It was though a little watery as you might expect.

My main course was lamb chops which were cooked as perfectly as anything I’ve ever eaten.

Dessert was a berry shortcake, quite nice.

The wine list was small and reasonably priced.  We had a Ridge 3 Valleys (I’ve been reading Hugh Johnson’s, A Life Uncorked and he’s a big Ridge fan) that was very tasty and not expensive.

My only complaint was the service.  There were long gaps between being seated and ordering.  Our server disappeared for long stretches and wasn’t attentive.  At the end of dessert she just plopped the bill on the table and took off.  We were hoping to cap the meal with a glass of port or coffee, but we weren’t feeling too welcome at that point, so we took our leave.

I’d definitely recommend R Bistro.  From watching the other tables service, I think our server was just having a bad night or something.

Located in the heart of downtown Decatur, about a half hour south east of Fort Wayne, Markos is serving up the best food in the area. We went there last weekend to celebrate with the family, and the place was packed. It’s good to see a restaurant that’s doing an exceptional job being well supported by the community.

I had a coffee rubbed New York strip steak, served on a sweet potato puree. The coffee rub gave it a nice charred flavor. The fried green tomato appetizer has to be tasted to be believed. Several in our party had the low country shrimp with grits and tasso gravy. “…a time to every purpose,” while you’re eating this you’ll be in that one perfect moment, aligned to the purpose intended from the beginning. Yeah, yeah, I hear you saying, “what a load of pseudo-mystical hooey,” but you try it and see if I’m not right.

The wine list is modest, and modestly priced. We had a delightful Beckman Syrah-Gernache for 28 bucks.

I’ve been to Markos three times now and it has been exceptional every time. You can’t do better than to visit Markos.

http://www.markoson2nd.com/

I was unfair in saying there are no decent wine stores in Fort Wayne. There is Wine Time in Jefferson Pointe. Although their selection is small, they have an excellent variety of wines from $10 to over $100. The proprietor, Jeff Armstrong, is friendly and knowledgeable, and doesn’t try to “sell”.

I stopped in tonight and bought a Prosecco for Valentine’s Day. The charge card machine was broken, but Jeff just wrote everything down and said, “I’ll call you if there’s a problem.” Now that’s good service.