Of Blackberries and Plastic Buckets

I remember picking blackberries as a young whippersnapper with my dad, mom, and two younger sisters. It was a toilsome and painful labor. The blackberry bushes were littered with a vast array of thorns and thistles and other sharp, pointy things. Thus, when we were finished collecting the fruits for the day, it never failed: my arms and legs were covered with scrapes and scratches.

Picking blackberries may have been a pain, but it was always well worth it. My mom would quickly go to work making cobblers and jellies from the produce. This was fine, but it wouldn't have been complete without my dad's contribution to utilizing the massive harvest of blackberries: wine.

I would have never considered my dad anything of a wine connoisseur. He was more of a beer and whiskey man. And he never had made a batch of wine in his life. But here he was eager and ready to make blackberry wine. And whenever my dad puts his mind to do something, it gets done-right away. So he gathered some information from a wine-making buddy of his, threw together some supplies, and got to work. My dad had become a wine genius in a matter of a couple weeks.

I was quickly dubbed "junior wine-maker" by my dad. With a couple five gallon plastic buckets and the fruit of the bush, we started mixing the concoction together-blackberries, sugar, yeast, water, etc. After the mixing and mashing process was complete, we closed up and sealed the lid over the five gallon bucket; ran a flexible, plastic tube from a hole in the lid (which we fastened and sealed with silicone) to a pickle jar which we filled with water; and stepped back.

Father and son, both of us giddy as schoolboys playing with their new set of Legos, we marveled at our creation with beaming faces.

Our next project task was patience. I don't remember how long we waited to open the lid (probably somewhere around six weeks or so), but it seemed like a lifetime to me. Each evening my dad and I would scurry downstairs and check on the progress of our science project. The water was still bubbling, so the mixture was still fermenting, and we kept waiting.

Eventually, the water stopped bubbling. This was the moment we had been eagerly anticipating since that day we got ourselves cut up by the blackberry bushes. We filtered the liquid, poured it into wine bottles, corked them up, and saved some for our immediate gratification. We weren't disappointed. I tell you the truth, that first time was the charm. We were never able to replicate that sweet, strong taste. We could have sold the bottles for twenty dollars each at the local farmer's market. But why would we do that if we could keep it all for ourselves, and enjoy the fruits of our labors? And so we did.

It was from this experience that I received a love for wine-making and wine-tasting. Therefore, I owe my knowledge, experiences, and abilities with and of the vinous drink to my dad and his adventurous wine-experimenting spirit.