Where we live in northern Arizona,
because of our high elevation (about 6000' above sea level) we get four true
seasons. Yes that includes winter with
hard freezes and sometimes snow storms that leave us with a couple feet of the
white stuff to deal with.
We had our first killing frost
of the season last week (running a bit late this year, it was) and while we got
most of the produce out of the gardens in time I couldn't help remembering back
to my family's home in CT where the first frost of the season meant we could
FINALLY harvest one of my favorite things from the gardens there...
Concord Grapes!
"The sun, with all those planets revolving around it and dependent on it, can still ripen a bunch of grapes as if it had nothing else in the universe to do."
Galileo Galilei
Planted along the base of the
white board fencing that bordered one side of the produce gardening plots at
our family's home in Cornwall Connecticut were eight Concord grape vines. I’m not sure when my father planted them but
I remember being told that they had been grown from cuttings from the vines
that my grandparents had been growing long before I was born. I do know that by the time I was getting involved
in the garden that they already looked gnarled and ancient to me with their
bottom trunks as big around as my arms.
We never really did very much
viticultural work on the vines. I
understand that professional grape growers and vintners have quite an annual
pruning and training regime to which they adhere to get their vines to produce
the best grapes in the proper abundance for flavor, acidity and sugar
balances. Our regime was to, basically,
ignore the vines completely until such a point we noticed that they were
impossible to harvest from because of the tangle of plant matter, or until they
were reaching out to take over another section of the garden, strangle a nearby
tree or smother the house. When that occurred
we would brutally chop out most of the growth and allow it to come back the
next year from stubs.
I know that the regular annual
transformation of the plants from their matted, barren, and sinister winter
form, through spring’s budding out, summers full green leafy canopy and into
autumn’s crisping leaves and eventual harvest was one of the most reliable of
nature’s seasonal calendars.
Having grape arbors was pretty
neat growing up, not just because the dense foliage made a great place to hide
out and build “forts”, or because of the myriad of birds that would be
attracted as the fruit ripened in the fall, but because it was the very last
thing we harvested for the year.
Sometimes some of the grapes would ripen early but they weren't the best
ones, not by a long shot. The best
grapes were the ones we picked after the first hard frost of the season, one
that would really wilt the leaves. That
was when the sugars really set in the fruit and that was when we went out with our
baskets and picked every bunch we could find and bring them into the warmth of
the kitchen to sort through. I remember
popping the occasional super-plump and juicy fruit out of its skin, into the
air to be caught in our mouths and swallowed seeds and all. The skins would stain our hands quite purple
but we didn't care.
Grape
jelly, Grape Juice, Grape Cobbler and Grape Pie all took turns getting made
during the Concord Grape harvest but the one thing I remember most fondly is
the Spiced Grape Preserves my grandmother put up every year. Like a jam but coarser and heavily perfumed
with freshly ground clove, allspice, and mace among many others, it was closer
to a chutney or other sweet condiment than it was to a breakfast spread. I remember it being served on the side with a
venison dish and how that wonderful and complex taste combination awoke my
budding palate.
