Looking
back on life, one of the things I regret is that I did not
take a course in Latin in high school. It sounded hard, it
wasn’t required, and I didn’t know at the time that I was
going become a biologist, so I passed it up. In the years
since then I have picked up several individual Latin words
when learning scientific names and anatomical structures,
but I know no Latin grammar. I have a friend who took a
course in Latin at the age of 75; he enjoyed it, but after a
few months he couldn’t remember any of it. The window of
opportunity for learning languages closed decades ago.
In an idle moment the other day I
was looking up something about winemaking on the Internet
and discovered that there must be several dozens of
companies that use the expression, "In Vino Veritas," in
their corporate titles and advertising. I think a fairly
literal translation of the phrase is "in the wine is truth;"
a looser translation may be "wine brings out the truth," or,
getting to really practical usage, "if you can get your
friend to drink enough wine, you can find out what he really
thinks of you." Maybe that’s stretching the vernacular a
bit, but there is no doubt that wine has often been used to
loosen tongues, with results that changed the course of
history, at least in spy novels.
All of this came to mind because of
a visit by my son and his family last Easter. The
grandchildren are growing up… the oldest is in college… but
they still like to do the things they did years ago, perhaps
in the wistful hope of clinging to childhood as long as
possible. So it came to pass that, after stuffing ourselves
beyond capacity at dinner, we went out in the yard and
played croquet. The lawn was covered with dandelions, and
when the match was over and enough toes had been battered, I
made an offhand remark to the effect that it was a shame to
see all the dandelions go to waste, and that we should make
some dandelion wine.
My granddaughter, who seems to have
inherited a quirky kind of curiosity from somewhere,
instantly seized on this as a great idea. My wife
immediately rejected it as a waste of time and ingredients,
but in a rare instance of democracy she was outvoted; so we
went to her cookbook library and found several books on
winemaking. The most complicated of the recipes directed
that the flowers should be boiled, soaked for 10 days, and
then be inoculated by sprinkling yeast on a piece of toast
and floating it on the brew. This seemed to fit the spirit
of wacky enthusiasm that had developed by that time, so we
proceeded to the yard, gathered the requisite quart of
flowers, found a pot large enough to hold them and a gallon
of water, added an orange and a lemon, and distributed
high-fives all around.
Such enthusiasm is rarely sustained
very long. After the crew departed for Baltimore I covered
the wine pot and set it in the laundry room, where it was
promptly forgotten. A couple of weeks later I remembered it.
Removing the cover, I was greeted by a most unwinelike
bouquet from the healthiest mold culture I had seen in
years. It definitely was not indicative of a good year, so I
threw it out and resolved to start a new batch with a recipe
I had used before. But alas, the dandelions were done
blooming. They had been at their peak on that one golden
day, and the opportunity was gone for this year.
As a young man I was surprised to
learn from an aunt that my teetotaling Methodist grandmother
had made wine for medicinal purposes, and of course my
wife’s Polish grandparents made it regularly. So when an
elderly friend gave us a wine keg sometime in the 1960s, we
decided to try. My wife never does anything halfway; we
picked our own fruit, berries and grapes, and made wine from
everything from apricots to zucchinis. Amateur winemakers
who are purists use the same cultured yeasts as commercial
vintners to get consistent quality, but we were in it for
fun, so we followed the methods used when winemaking was
invented 7,500 years ago. We let the fruit ferment by
natural yeasts. These wild yeasts are found on all naturally
grown fruits; they are most noticeable as the glossy,
bluish-colored coat that covers grapes and raspberry vines.
Sometimes the results were good, and sometimes bad; tasting
a batch for the first time was part of the fun of it.
Eventually we got tired of the mess
and stopped making wine, but there are still several bottles
of it on a shelf behind the clutter in our basement.
Recently I opened a bottle of peach wine from 1971. It
tasted vaguely like sherry, which I don’t particularly care
for, but I drank it anyway; I figured that in the spirit of
veritas it was an obligation. Tomorrow I will open some
more, and if it is palatable we may have it to celebrate the
4th of July. Which reminds me … the grandchildren may come
again for the holiday, and it looks like there will be a
good crop of elderberries this year. They should be ready to
pick about then; and if my wife objects, we can respond as
the gladiators did in Roman times, Ave Caesar, nos moriaturi
salutemus. I’m not sure what that means, but it sounds
impressive. And if that doesn’t persuade her, we can always
fall back on in vino veritas. She can’t argue with that.
Read other articles by Bill Meredith