Published May 12, 2021
“Dandelion wine. […] The words were summer on the tongue. The wine was summer caught and stoppered. And now that Douglas knew, he really knew he was alive, and moved turning through the world to touch and see it all, it was only right and proper that some of his new knowledge, some of this special vintage day would be sealed away for opening on a January day with snow falling fast and the sun unseen for weeks or months and perhaps some of the miracle by then forgotten and in need of renewal. Since this was going to be a summer of unguessed wonders, he wanted it all salvaged and labeled so that any time he wished, he might tiptoe down in this dank twilight and reach up his fingertips.”
Dandelion Wine by Ray Bradbury
In May, summer is felt as inevitable joy and inevitable happiness that will always overtake, catch, and carry you away into the bright world of the river sand under your feet, the mown grass, the south wind in your hair, and the late sunsets. After a long off-season, these sensations are especially amazing. It is not enough just to enjoy these feelings; you want to keep them for the future too if you suddenly want to relive the memories of breakfasts and dinners on the veranda.
There is an excellent way to prevent warm sunny days from sneaking away without a trace. And that’s the dandelion wine! Just like Bradbury recommended it to us:
“Peer through it at the wintry day — the snow melted to grass, the trees were reinhabitated with bird, leaf, and blossoms like a continent of butterflies breathing on the wind. And peering through, color sky from iron to blue. […] Hold summer in your hand, pour summer in a glass, a tiny glass of course, the smallest tingling sip for children; change the season in your veins by raising glass to lip and tilting summer in.”
As a child, I was sure that there was no such thing as dandelion wine. Bradbury’s fame as a science fiction writer played against the drink in this case. But dandelion wine does exist. This Bradbury work is perhaps the most personal of all because, for the most part, it presents itself as an autobiography. The idea of the book began with the fact that 30-year-old Bradbury remembered how in his childhood, his grandfather made wine from flowers according to a recipe from an American magazine.
This wine contains not only the juice of summer but also the life-giving taste of nature. The grandmother of the protagonist uses dandelion wine as a medicine and even gives children in glass doses. The drink, indeed, in addition to all other qualities, has excellent anti-inflammatory and antipyretic properties.
“Above, in the vast house, there would be coughings, sneezings, wheezings, and groans, childish fevers, throats raw as butcher’s meat, noses like bottled cherries, the stealthy microbe everywhere. […] Then, rising from the cellar like a June goddess, Grandma would come, something hidden but obvious under her knitted shawl. This, carried to every miserable room upstairs-and-down would be dispensed with aroma and clarity into neat glasses, to be swigged neatly.”
Dandelion wine tastes like slightly sweet champagne and is almost alcohol-free. This wine takes about six months to mature. During this time, it becomes light and transparent. In time for the winter months, the drink will be completely ready, exactly at the time when the memories of hot, happy days dissolve like the fluffy caps of a dandelion ripening in the meadow. A bottle of light homemade wine that has trapped and clogged the summer will help you quickly revive the summer sensations.
There are two main methods of making this wine, with and without yeast. Without yeast, the taste of wine is more natural (without the aftertaste of mashes). Below is one such recipe. However, the wine without yeast can easily go moldy (there is no such problem with yeast-based wine at all). To avoid mold, vodka is added, and the bottles are checked regularly.
The second question is when and which dandelions to collect. You need to collect flowers far from the city, noisy highways and dusty streets. It is also better to collect dandelions in the morning when the flowers are maximally open.
Ingredients:
Dandelion flowers (a little more than half of the usual transparent plastic bag with a capacity of 3 l, tightly packed)
Sugar – 1 kg
Water – 4 l
Vodka – 300-400 ml
Raisins – 0.5 cups
Lemon – 1 pc.
Orange – 1 pc.
Ground ginger – 0.5 tsp
Carnations – 5 pcs.
Cooking method:
1. Separate the petals from the receptacles. You can also use whole flowers (with the receptacles). Then the wine will come out with a healthy but noticeable bitterness.
2.Place the dandelion petals in a large saucepan and pour about 3.5 liters of cold water into them.
3. Cut the peel of the lemons and oranges into wide thin strips and squeeze the juice out of the pulp. Add citrus zest and juice to the petals. Then stir this mixture, cover the saucepan with a lid and let it rest for a day.
4. At the end of the day, bring the dandelion infusion to boiling, simmer for a few minutes and then remove the pan from the stove.
5.While the dandelion infusion is boiling and cooling, prepare the syrup. Boil 0.5 liters of water, add sugar, and cook (actively stirring at first) over low heat until the mixture thickens. The correct consistency can be checked by separating the spatula from the surface of the syrup: the syrup should drain in long viscous drops.
6. Strain the infusion twice, add the sugar syrup and ground ginger and mix the solution well. The liquid should cool to room temperature. Then add the vodka.
7. Pour the infusion into bottles and add 1-2 cloves at a time. Then distribute the unwashed raisins evenly between the bottles. When everything is ready, put balloons firmly on the bottlenecks.
8. Store the bottles in a dark place. When the balloons over the bottles begin to inflate (fermentation has begun), poke small holes in their tips to allow the gas to escape. After a while, the balloons will blow off. That will mean that the fermentation ended. During this time, the wine becomes lighter, and sediment forms on the bottoms of the bottles.
9. Now is the crucial moment to remove the sediment. Move the bottles to a higher place (e.g., on a table) without shaking up the sediment. Then place the clean bottles a bit lower (on a chair). Take a rubber tube and lower it into the wine bottle 3 cm from the sediment. Then suck in a little of the drink (like a co*cktail through a straw) to start the process. After that, lower the other end of the tube into the clean bottle and pour only clear wine.
You can drink wine at this point if you don’t mind that it is still a little cloudy.
10. Bottles with wine should be tightly corked and stored for 3-6 months (up to a year) to mature in a cool, dark place. The sediment should be removed again if necessary.
Olga Spiridonova
Place: USA
