A Recipe for Remembering
The Everyday Alchemy of Making Wine
Much of what endures isn’t just story or memory, but practice. Habits repeated until they become instinct.
Earlier this summer, I noticed clusters of wild fox grapes growing above my grandmother’s back deck. Their small, dusky skins clung to the vine mostly overlooked. I watched them for weeks.
When the mornings began to cool and the grapes hung heavy with ripeness I gathered them, sticky-fingered and curious. I don’t drink much, and I’ve never made wine, but something in me said to try. The process was simple enough: a pound of wild grapes rinsed clean; a cup or two of sugar; aromatics and spices if you choose.
While my aunt and uncle were visiting from England a few weeks ago, I mentioned the experiment and my aunt told me that my great-grandmother, Nana Hayden, used to make her own damson plum wine every year. In that moment my summer experiment became a thread pulled taut across generations.
I’ve often thought of ancestry as movement.
Migrations, crossings, the leaving behind of one thing in order to survive another. That’s how most of my family stories go. Borders have been redrawn, names have changed, languages have been lost and most of what’s been passed down to me has come through rupture.
Finding out Nana Hayden made wine was like finding a hidden seam that had been there all along, waiting to be traced. It was a reminder that not all remembering comes through revelation.
Sometimes, it arrives through your hands.
Wild Grape Wine (A Simple Method)
Gather your wild grapes and wash them well. I used 1lb for this recipe. Measure out 1-2 cups of granulated sugar and divide the grapes and sugar into an equal number of portions.
Add one portion of grapes to the bottom of a non reactive jar (glass works best) and crush lightly with the back of a wooden spoon. Layer with one portion of sugar. Repeat until all portions are used, ending with sugar on top.
Add aromatics and spices if you wish. I added honeysuckle from our yard for extra sweetness and cloves for body. Close the jar and store in a cool, dark place. Let sit for 24hrs and then shake the jar to evenly distribute the sugar and spices.
Repeat for 5 days. If the mixture froths, open the lid to vent and seal again.
Keep the jar undisturbed for a minimum of 21 days. 3 months is recommended for more complex flavors.
When you’re ready, open the jar and strain the juices into a clean jar.
Making wine requires a deep sense of trust, the unseen world of microbes transforming sweetness into something darker, deeper, more enduring. You don’t see what’s happening, but you know that something is. The transformation is invisible until it isn’t. My great-grandmother must have understood this. She turned something simple into something lasting. Everyday alchemy.
I wonder if she knew what she was leaving behind.
And as the grapes slowly turn, I wonder how many other inheritances lie dormant, waiting to be uncovered.
Making this wine now feels like a gesture of remembrance. A new way to honor what was nearly lost. An opportunity to let it become something new, something I can carry forward and pass down as well.
When I pour my first glass, I will raise it to the great-grandmother I never met, but whose hands might still be guiding mine.