Ned Tortillas

Most folks who live in Carson are into doing things themselves, so instead of a  long drive and liquor store prices, some locals make their own alcoholic beverages; beer and wine usually, although we have sampled some homemade brandy that could qualify as a weapon of mass destruction. Quality ranges from superb to gag me, depending on the ingredients and the skill of the producer. 

One of my neighbors fancies himself an expert winemaker. He’s done it a long time and has his own method. He uses fruit or fruit juice, mixes in some ordinary yeast and brown sugar and comes up with a finished product he proclaims to be absolutely the best on the mesa.

He was in a particularly good mood one day when he wandered by and handed me a bottle of a cloudy dark liquid that he swore was the best pear wine I’d ever taste. I held it up to the light and mumbled maybe it needed a little aging to settle the visible particles, but he said it wouldn’t clear; that was just the brown sugar he used. 

I decided to age the wine for a few days anyway, and placed it in a cupboard on its side. The next day there was a loud explosion in the kitchen. An oak cupboard door flew open and a sticky viscous liquid saturated the whole room. The floor, ceiling, walls, cupboards, table and everything that wasn’t covered, was now splattered with slimy gobs of half-dissolved brown sugar.

The room got more than a taste of my homemade wine, but I didn’t get any. What was left in the bottom of the bottle after it exploded was thick, dark and murky. I decided to pass. 

But done right, homemade wine can be equal to or better than a lot of what you find in the racks at the stores. Another neighbor popped up at a party not long ago with a couple of bottles of red he’d bottled five years earlier. It was the best red wine I’ve tasted in New Mexico.

The rewards of winemaking can be delicious indeed. There are places to buy winemaking kits in town and on the Internet, which has tons of information on winemaking. I’m considering making some myself, but I think I’ll stay away from the brown sugar.