Bottling at the Big House

In between being put out by the weather,which gave us teasing glimpses of those warm, dry beautiful summer days before releasing punishing deluges, we drowned our sorrows in thoughts of making alcohol.

First we went on a dandelion flower evisceration mission.  This is the first step to making dandelion wine.  Seven cups of dandelions minus their foliage goes into one gallon of wine.  Seven cups of dandelions is a lot of dandelions--but when we were done it was hard to see that we'd made any dent in the population at all.  I planned--if it ever stopped raining long enough to make our lawn more of a lawn and less of a swamp--to mow the yellow beauties into oblivion, so their number would be up eventually.  But so far they were winning the population battle.

Then we nonchalantly bottled our blueberry wine.  We've done this so many times (read: three) that bottling and corking is becoming old hat.  We were expecting  the task to take us a good couple of hours and so, when it was over in a mere fifteen minutes, we were at a loss as to how to amuse ourselves. 

Fortunately we had sealing wax and golden mailing labels, so the fun wasn't over yet.  We don't have a true seal but that didn't deter us.  We went through our collective coin collections and finally found the perfect seal for our product label; a New York City subway token.  The "Y" in NYC is cut out of the center, and the words "Good for one fare" seemed like the perfect invitation to have a drink. 

The product label?  Big House Blue.

This is what happens when it rains too much in New Hampshire.

tags: wine