Ever watched that episode of “It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia” where the Gang plays Chardee Macdennis, the crazy board game they designed? This wine is inspired by that sense of madness.
Behold, the start of ChardeeMacLychee 2020. I figure an F’d up year deserves an F’d up wine.
While being stuck in pandemic isolation because of Covid, I decided to make wine of whatever stuff I had on hand. This wine is comprised of grapes from the neighbors, grapes from my vines, frozen blueberries, frozen peaches, freezer-burned sour cherries, honey, and a can of lychees in heavy syrup. The grapes needed an extra rinse because of the wildfire ash. They are “table grapes” and not cultivated for wine.
I’d tag it with my usual “ten dollar winemaking experiment” but I only needed $3 to make it. It’s nice to already have the brewing and fermenting equipment already on hand.
I use a potato masher to squish down the fruit for the mash. One of these days I’m going to just run the whole thing through the blender in small batches. Wait… that’s a terrible idea. With as much fruit as is needed for wine, I’d blow out the blender in no time flat.
While the wine is fermenting, you have to aerate it every day — fortunately I have an attachment for the power drill that helps with that.
After bottling it, I printed labels on recycled paper and attached them with packing tape. Taste-wise, the wine turned out better than it had any right too. It’s pretty dry with forced lychee notes. I’m not going to age it because that is just asking for trouble.
Jenn Likes to Make Things 