A nice glass of Chateau Drooling

Growing your own produce is undoubtedly a great thing. Eating fresh home-picked salad leaves with a few ripe tomatoes from the greenhouse is a wonderful experience.

But let’s be honest. Delicious though it is, it’s still salad. And nobody brings a bowl of salad to a party. (Although that was a lovely green bean salad we had the other day, many thanks Rose!). No, for all its merits you can’t get pissed on salad.

So a different approach is needed if the homegrown approach is to meet all the Drooling family needs. In other words, I am growing grapes.

I did think about growing hops to make some beer, beer being a bit quicker to brew, but it occurred to me that I haven’t the faintest idea what a hop looks like, let alone what sort of plant (bush? tree?) it grows on.

So wine it is. I’ve got three vines in the garden, one planted four years ago and the other two on either side of an arch, planted last spring. The older vine, a Cabernet Sauvignon, produces lovely grapes each autumn, but so far I haven’t done anything other than eat them. The younger two vines produced one rather tart bunch between them last year, but as it was their first year I’m glossing over that and putting it down to the petulance of youth.

Despite this minor blip, according to my calculations the extra two vines should give me enough grapes to make around 12 bottles of wine this year. I’m a little hazy on the details of the process (a vague image of standing barefoot in a bucket full of grapes comes to mind) but hey, I’ve got a good few months to hone the technique before the harvest.

Bottoms up!

On the ipod while cleaning carefully between the toes: Fountains of Wayne / Mexican Wine. Yes, I think I will have another glass.

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