Playing with my wine

An Indiana thunderstorm the other night brought down several branches from our walnut trees. There were some nicely formed green walnuts on them and I wondered if those walnuts had to be the nuisance they usually become when ripe, making it dangerous to walk outside without a helmet (these are tall old trees!) and making our footing treacherous when they lie rotting all over in the fall. Italians make a liqueur from green walnuts steeped in spirits, gathered on San Giovanni’s day (June 24) and ready by Easter. The French make “vin de noix” by steeping the quartered green walnuts in red wine with sugar and brandy. The walnuts in France are supposed to be gathered after St. Jean’s day (June 24, doh) but before Bastille Day, so get cracking! In the countryside, the resulting wine is sometimes served to guests as would be the Port it resembles – remember that the French, who are otherwise gods about everything they put in their stomachs, are children about their aperitifs, seeking constant sweetness – so porto, like vin de noix, is an aperitif. It is, however, an aperitif for which enormous health claims can be made. As we Americans would say, combining the anti-oxidants and polyphenols in red wine with those in nuts is a real power drink. I found a basic recipe in Mireille Johnson’s Cuisine of the Rose: Classical French Cooking from Burgundy and Lyonnais. Her book is out of print but there is an internet adaptation of her vin de noix recipe here. Yesterday I put up a couple of quarts as an experiment. Drop by in January and have a taste, we’ll see if this is an experiment worth repeating. To steep the walnuts, I used a wine from Big Red, a new wine from La Vielle Ferme, called V.F. This is a 2002 Costieres de Nimes, a rich and rustic wine which is an utter steal for $5.99. Not sophisticated but a deep and rewarding product of the Perrin family, who do also make some of the most sophisticated wines of the Rhone valley, for forty times the price. I had a half bottle of the V.F. left over, so I tried a recent "Sangrini" cocktail recipe from the New York Times, July 3. This is my own adaptation of the NYT formula, to fit my own leftovers. Take a half bottle of V.F. or other red wine, boil down by half, add a half cup of sugar, an ounce of brandy and an ounce of orange liqueur. Chill, then mix an ounce of this reduction with an ounce of liqueur, two ounces of vodka, a squeeze of lemon juice, and shake over ice. Serve in a martini glass with a grape. Wow! Smoother and more intense than sangria but don't make the mistake of drinking two just because they taste good. Not only is this delicious but it is also amazingly appetizing and physically beautiful when made with a richly colored wine base, like the V.F. Meanwhile, I also found a different recipe for vin de noix, using walnut leaves rather than the nuts and plan to try some of that too. The leaf-based wine is supposed to be ready in October. But if you stop by in the fall, remember the helmet.