Random reminder

Press, 27 August 1977, Page 23

Random reminder

THROUGH YOUR GLASS, DARKLY

It is about time' someone just stepped right out in the open and debunked this whole cloying myth about the true, the blushful hippocrene with beaded bubbles winking at the brim, writes Mathew Rose, our wino correspondent, author, of the best-selling expose of French wine counterfeiting, “Nothing in this Life is Sauterne.” The recent visit of an Australian wine connoisseur who enthused over the emotional impact of drinking a bottle of 1825 French wine that cost hundreds of dollars only adds to the layman’s fear and awe of wine. Most people have a palate more suited to scraping rust off bicycle handlebars than to savouring the delicate nuances of extravagant, aged vintages, and the sooner people come to terms with this the better. After all, for most of us it is a big enough task to arrive home three hours after work has ended and explain why we have had to leave the car in town, why we cannot therefore run mother to her weightlifting class, and why we are not walking in as straight a line as observers with a symmetrical frame of mind might prefer; it would be going too far to have to explain the cancellation of the annual holiday and the new garage roof because you’ve had a glass of wine or

two on the way home. The average palate, and wallet, would be just as satisfied with homemade wines, or “country wines” as they are called. A colleague recently made his own wine for the first time and he has been kind enough to pass on his recipe and experience for those who wish to try it themselves. You will need: several pounds of sugar (there are books if you want to get finnicky about proportions; my colleague was vague), the necessary amount of fruit (see seatfull of bananas”), a large plastic dustbin (remove rubbish first, unless making liqueur), empty flagons (sterilised with some special chemical; he could not remember the name, so he used carbolic soap), clear plastic tubing (available at any store that stocks clear plastic tubing), pieces of muslin (or lace curtains if the neighbours are out at the time), rubber bands, clear plastic sheet, and a packet of winemaker’s yeast, available at those little shops that sell it. Method: Boil up the sugar with water until it forms a sugar syrup and bubbles over to form a rock-hard crust on much of the top of the stove; chip off what you can of the crust; mash the bananas into a cringing, mushy paste; pour most of the hot sugar syrup into the plastic rubbish bin (about 10 per cent

should fall on your trousers and on the floor) and add mashed bananas; throw in the yeast and cover the bin with two layers of muslin tied with a pair of tights that later turn out to be still wanted and, in fact, a matter of some contention as they are the only one without a hole, a dinner party is imminent, and the shops are closed; leave this mixture “working” until looks of nausea appear on the faces of visitors and your wife will enter the kitchen only with a handerchief held to nose — the smell tells you it is now ready for moving to a second plastic bin, being poured through some more muslin to remove lumps; leave this “working” in the kitchen until a lawyer has been contacted and divorce is imminent, then syphon off into flagons, which are sealed with small pieces of plastic sheet and rubber bands and stored in a dark cupboard; leave for several weeks; on noticing that the varnish has come off the cupboard doors, check the flagons and find them to contain a dark-brown vinegary liquid, from which, "extending out of the necks of the flagons and over the contents of the lower shelves of the cupboards are penicillinlike growths formed from an obscure sort of spaceage plastic foam. This i* your wine, Cheers.