Posted July 28, 2003

I was sipping a local Catawba wine the other day. The glass was sweating heavily in our Southern Illinois humidity. Within it was a blush wine with a hint of mauve to its color, in my mouth cool, light, refreshing and deliciously, delicately fruity. It had just a touch of a musky aftertaste, an exotic fillip like a beloved but slap-dash signature on a faded, treasured letter.

It recalled my first brushes with Catawba wine. I'd fallen in love with the juice on vacation at a friend's summer home in Put-in-Bay, Ohio, where the local vineyard also bottled juice. None of your oversweet, overpowering, overfamiliar Welch's, but an intriguing beverage tart as lemonade and that caught my attention like a good story. When I came of age and determined to become sophisticated (I came from a family that rarely indulged in alcohol) I bought myself a bottle of cheap Catawba wine.

I couldn't finish it, not only on account of the unfamiliar alcohol, but because of its rank muskiness.

A few years later we made friends with a German Forestry major, Joachim. One day at dusk he sat down at his place at the supper table and looked from me to Jim with an air of friendly satisfaction, then glanced out the bay window into the darkling yard. "It's getting late early," he said.

There was Welch's grape jelly on the table that night. He spread it on his bread, laughing.

"It's a waste of good grapes!" he told us. "You should make wine out of these!"

"They're American grapes," I reassured him. "They don't make good wine."

"Americans make great wine! Nothing wrong with California wine."

"Yes, but we make it out of European grapes," Jim told him. "Vinus vinifera."

"American grapes are foxy," I added.

"What's that?"

"It's an unpleasant aftertaste."

Joachim snorted.

"We'll show you!" I promised.

After dinner I hunted up the corkscrew and we piled into the car. First, to National Supermarket for a bottle of Catawba juice. Then to the liquor store for a bottle of the wine. They had two brands, and we choose Virginia Dare, which claimed to be grown from offsets of the oldest vineyard in the colonies. (I wonder if there's a Snorri Karlsefnisson brand from Newfoundland?)

Home again, we poured out small glasses of the juice. We toasted each other, saying "Prost!" as Joachim had taught us that summer. He drained his quickly, smacking his lips as he set it down. "You should make wine out of this!" he told us.

"Someone did," I said. I rinsed the glasses while Jim laid hold of the corkscrew. Then he laughed and unscrewed the cap.

I poured, we toasted each other again and Jim and I sipped ours. Joachim grinned and took a hearty swig of his. He clunked his glass happily onto the table, and his mouth was open to repeat his admonition when an odd look came over his face as the aftertaste hit him. Soon he was looking at us like a puppy who'd just been kicked. Sourly, he shoved the glass away from him, and morosely gave his opinion of the wine.

"You should make jelly out of this!"

By Ruby Jung, even the background. All rights reserved to both.