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It’s the only second week of
February and I have been drinking my Vin d’Orange all week. It’s completely awesome and addictive. I started sampling the brew after about a
week, at which time it tasted startlingly like bubblegum. I’m not kidding. A flavor that I had always assumed was
completely artificial had been created in a jar full of wine, fruit, and sugar
and botanicals in my own dining room.
WTF? I was worried. I hate
bubblegum. What to do? I remembered them
that one of the other Vin d’Orange recipes on line called for a quarter cup of
coffee beans. I grabbed a handful and
tossed them in. Within just a few days I
had a drink that tasted strongly of coffee, but more the way coffee smells than
the way it tastes. It was bitter and a
little odd, but good. By the end of
January, I felt it was ready to bottle.
Because both the sweetness and the coffee flavor were so strong, I decided
to cut the finished product with the rest of the BotaBox of Pinot Grigio, and
half a bottle of Rosé that I had in Fridge.
Filtering the end result through cheesecloth and a coffee filter was
time consuming (and used a surprising number of coffee filters) , but worth
it. The result is something I am very
happy with.
Tonight, as I break into the
second (of three) bottles from this original bottling, I realized I had better
get started on the next batch. This time
I used rosé wine from provence. I used
two grapefruits, a lemon, and two clementines and two clementine peels for the
fruit. I put coffee beans in from the
get go, but only a very few—maybe ten. I
also added some angostura bitters, and a small handful of rose
peppercorns. I cut back the cinnamon to
half a stick and the sugar to one cup. I
did not measure the cardamom pods. I’ll
let you know how it turns out.
