Anything that doesn’t absolutely, positively, have to happen today gets the put-off. The extent to which this is a problem is in direct proportion to the number of things that absolutely, positively, have to happen today. In the winter, when very little has to happen today, I’d go so far as to argue that triage is the best system going. In the spring, though, when each today has a significant set of demands, it can most definitely be a problem.

Today, the problem is Carlo Rossi Chablis.

I asked my friend Maggie to help because I knew she had the right hat

You see, it’s dandelion wine season. This is the third year we’ve made it, and the third year we’ve harvested our dandelions from one particular field at Mass Audubon’s Long Pasture Sanctuary. This is the third year we’ll be following Euell Gibbons’ recipe. This is the third year we’ll be needing two one-gallon glass jugs with screw tops.

The first year, we discovered that, while the jugs themselves are cheap, the shipping is expensive. Since Jugs R Us (Google that at your peril) doesn’t yet have an outlet on Cape Cod, we would have had to pay about $30. for four of them.

Alternatively, we could buy them for $12.99 each, full of Carlo Rossi Chablis. It wasn’t a hard decision. That first year, we made it just as we started the wine-making process. Because the dandelions first have to steep for three days, and then the wine needs to ferment for a week, we had ten days before we needed the jugs to be empty.

The science of oenology has come a long way in the last decade or two, and cheap wine isn’t nearly as bad as it used to be. This is something I’ve been grateful for, as our seven-bottle-a-week habit (minus beer nights) precludes the regular consumption of expensive wine. But never have I been as grateful as when Kevin and I were faced with the prospect of downing two gallons of Carlo Rossi Chablis in a week and a half.

You’d think we would have learned our lesson that first go-round. The dandelions come up at the same time every year. We always know we’ll need two one-gallon glass jugs in the middle of May. We could get one gallon in, say, January, and another two months later. We could plan to make wine-intensive stews and soups to use up some of it. We could even branch out and try Carlo Rossi Burgundy.

But no. Last year, and then again this year, the first week in May finds us buying two gallons of Carlo Rossi Chablis, and trying to convince ourselves it’s really not that bad.

And you know, it really isn’t. It’s characterless, sure, but inoffensive. You could do worse.

Still, if any of you get a dinner invitation from us this week, consider this fair warning. I’ll understand if you’re busy.

You might also enjoy:

1. Dandelion wine Today we put this year’s vintage into jugs (more on...
2. Wine from a stone We’ve been had. We’re in the process of making dandelion...
3. A wine tasting It was time. Last May, we made our very first...

Last May, we made our very first batch of dandelion wine. Up until then, the only fermenting I’d ever done was accidental, a result of leaving fruit juice, or black beans, or cooked barley sitting in the refrigerator too long. As this was our first attempt at deliberate fermentation, we followed the recipe from Euell “Try Anything” Gibbons pretty much to the letter.

At the time, I was unconvinced that dandelions had anything to do with dandelion wine. Oh sure, you start with a bunch of dandelions, but then you add things like oranges and lemons and sugar and ginger, which are all way more delicious than dandelions. I suspected that the whole dandelion part – which involves hours of backbreaking labor and many, many insects – was just inserted into the recipe to build character.

Now I’m not so sure.

The glass looked clean at the time ...

Last night, we broke out the dandelion wine, which has been aging for almost ten months. There are two gallon jugs of it in the basement, but we reserved one small bottle that we keep in the kitchen so we can taste it without disturbing the jugs. Or shlepping to the basement.

First, we took a good hard look at it. It’s not completely clear, although it’s clearer than it was when we bottled it. It could be my imagination, but there’s a faint residue on the sides of the bottle that looks remarkably like pollen. In color, it’s like the dishwater you washed the orange juice glasses in. Which is not to say it’s unappetizing; it looks like something you can drink.

We each took a sip. It has a faint effervescence and a pronounced (surprise!) citrus flavor, but it also has very decided vegetal overtones that balance the sweetness and fruity flavor. I was forced to conclude that dandelion wine does indeed require dandelions.

Which means, come May, we’re in for another few hours of backbreaking work. It’s not ready for prime time yet, but we’re happy enough with our 2009 vintage to want to try it again for 2010.

You might also enjoy:

1. Linda and Dan’s dandelion wine Well, March is shaping up to be a tough month....
2. Turning water into wine — using weeds Flowers are good. Wine is good. In between, though, it...
3. Plonkfest I’m not much a of a planner. There are no...

We’re in the process of making dandelion wine, using Euell Gibbons’ recipe. It’s a simple procedure:

1.  Pour one gallon of boiling water over one gallon of dandelion flowers. Steep for three days.

2.  Strain out the flowers, and add a small piece of chopped ginger, the zest and juice of three oranges and a lemon, and three pounds of sugar to the liquid.

3.  Boil the mixture for twenty minutes. Let it cool to lukewarm, and add a package of yeast. Cover loosely, and leave in a warm place for a week.

4.  Strain into a gallon jug, cap loosely, and keep in a dark place for three weeks. Then decant and cork tightly. Wait at least six months. Drink.

Now think about it. This isn’t a recipe for dandelion wine at all. It’s a recipe for stone soup.

Winemaker at work

Remember the story? It’s a Brothers Grimm tale about a man who swans into town with a pot and a stone, promising soup. He boils up the stone and then muses that the soup might taste even better with an onion. And some carrots. And maybe a chicken. He cons all the ingredients out of the townspeople, who then marvel at what delicious soup a stone makes.

It’s always seemed unlikely to me that you could make wine out of dandelions, and now I know that you probably can’t. It’s ginger and oranges and sugar that you can make wine out of. That first step – the one involving weeds – is completely extraneous. You might as well use grass clippings, or pine needles. Or stones, for that matter.

I must be a little slow on the uptake, because I didn’t realize this until yesterday.

Yesterday was Step 4, straining out the bits of orange, lemon, and ginger and putting the wine in jugs. To prepare for step four, we had to acquire two one-gallon glass jugs (we doubled the recipe). An empty one-gallon jug costs somewhere between three and five dollars, plus shipping and handling. A one-gallon jug full of lousy wine costs twelve dollars, no shipping, no handling.

That is why we ended up with two gallons of Carlo Rossi Chablis, which isn’t nearly as bad as you’d think. A little seltzer, a little ice, and it’s absolutely drinkable. Kevin actively likes it.

We bought the wine three days before we needed the jugs, and, over the course of those three days drank and cooked with an embarrassing quantity of it. Still, there was some left and we transferred it to used wine bottles. We washed the jugs, removed the incriminating labels, and poured in the “dandelion” wine.

Nice jugs!

Ideally, at this stage, you rig the jugs with a fermentation trap, a gizmo that allows the carbon dioxide produced by what fermentation is still going on to escape without letting any air in. A bona fide fermentation trap is a glass or plastic tube with a big bend and three bulbs, and you can buy it from people who sell winemaking supplies. Alternatively, you can rig a tube through a cork and run it into a water bath.

Or you can just use a balloon. Guess which method we chose.

There was a little left over, though, which of course we had to drink. It tasted – surprise! – of orange and lemon and ginger. It had a faint effervescence and a distinct alcoholic edge. But I have to admit that it also had a pleasant note of green weediness. I guess that’s what stones taste like.

You might also enjoy:

1. Plonkfest I’m not much a of a planner. There are no...
2. A wine tasting It was time. Last May, we made our very first...
3. Dandelion wine Today we put this year’s vintage into jugs (more on...

Our chosen field

Flowers are good. Wine is good. In between, though, it gets downright disgusting.

We’ve been waiting for dandelion season ever since our friends Dan and Linda first brought us a bottle of their dandelion wine. We were fully prepared to take a sip, smile politely, and tell them how good it was. And we did tell them how good it was, but politeness wasn’t in it. The stuff really was good.

When the dandelions began to bloom this spring, I kept my eyes open for a good spot for picking. “Good,” in this case, means dense with dandelions, away from heavy car traffic, and not on the front lawn of anyone with a shotgun and a short temper.

I found the perfect field on an Audobon preserve in Cummaquid, a town a few miles east of us, and Kevin and I went out last week and snipped off two gallons of dandelion flowers. For the record, two gallons is a lot of dandelion flowers. Dandelions have the chutzpah to grow close to the ground, and harvesting them means a lot of stooping, bending, and squatting. Dandelion wine is not for the faint of back.

After hours of backbreaking labor ...

We took our haul home, and left the flowers outside to give the insects a chance to escape. Then we started the wine-making process.

There are many recipes for dandelion wine, but most of them are similar. You steep the flowers in water for a few days, then drain them and bring the liquid to a boil with sugar, citrus juice, and other coloring and flavoring agents. Cool it down and add yeast. Let it ferment, and then age. Different recipes call for different quantities and timing, but that’s the basic process.

Dan and Linda used Euell Gibbons’ recipe, and we’re following suit. We boiled two gallons of water and poured it over our two gallons of dandelion flowers, and left it to steep. If you’ve never seen dandelions steeped in water for a few days, I’m here to tell you that they’re not appetizing. They’re gray and water-logged, and they smell like lettuce that’s been in the fridge too long.

An inauspicious beginning?

I can believe that this vegetal soup turns into wine, but only because it’s happened million, billions, gazillions of times over the course of wine-making history. Kevin is less sanguine.

It’s hard to picture the first couple who tried this. I imagine them peering skeptically at the soggy, smelly mess in their crock. When he says, “That doesn’t smell very good,” she doesn’t have the option of saying, “It worked for Dan and Linda.”

You might also enjoy:

1. A wine tasting It was time. Last May, we made our very first...
2. Wine from a stone We’ve been had. We’re in the process of making dandelion...
3. Linda and Dan’s dandelion wine Well, March is shaping up to be a tough month....