Letters From The Barn: Homemade Wine
For the holidays, I got a lovely gift of some homemade wine. A riesling to be exact. Now, as someone who barely drinks, even knowing the type of wine makes me feel like an expert. I took it with me to one holiday event, but they were all basically tea drinkers like me, so I lugged it home again thirty miles on a snowy, foggy night.
The next time I tried to drink it was a Saturday. I had worked hard all day outside. I'd put new bedding down in the barn and chased a rabbit that had escaped the barn and was hiding out in the snow. He was wise, though. Once the goats and I got out of the way, he made his way back through the fence and hopped back into the barn like he knew just where he belonged.
After that, I knocked ice out of water buckets, tried to fix a broken furnace and worried over my septic tank. By the end of the day, I thought perhaps it was finally a good time to open that bottle of homemade riesling. I got it out of the cabinet. Found a special glass. And brought it to the table to sit and read a book for the rest of the evening.
Only, I had no corkscrew. Apparently, people who actually drink wine know that you need to have these things around the house. And, apparently, it's not included in the book of manners that one must give a corkscrew to your numbskull friends who don't drink and don't realize until the last possible second that they might need one.
So, I made a cup of coffee and put everything back in the cabinet. Then, I put it on my grocery list to buy a corkscrew. Do you think I've bought one yet? Let's just say that I'm planning on bringing it over to my neighbor's house the next time we do something wonderfully boring on a Saturday night like read the paper together or play cards. Do you think she might have a corkscrew? Let's hope she does.
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Meriwether O'Connor
All books. All the Time. Established 2005