Weed or wine?

Some people see them as a nice contrast in color against the greenness of the lawn; some consider them a nuisance and try everything to get rid of them. Then there are those who take the pesky weed and turn it into a delicate white wine. It is a brilliant alternative to ridding your lawn of the common dandelion, also known in scientific terms as Taraxacum officinale.

This troublesome weed was actually imported by the Pilgrims as they found it particularly useful for both medicine and food. Without going into a lot of detail and sounding like this should be in the Mind, Body & Spirit or Charting a Course sections of the magazine, suffice it say that the leaves are more nutritious than anything on the market. They are higher in beta-carotene than carrots, contain more iron and calcium than spinach, and have many more B vitamins than you can count. They help strengthen the whole body, especially the liver and gallbladder. The white milky sap inside the stem is commonly used for removing warts, moles, pimples, and soothing bee stings.

If you are interested in consuming this tasty treat of nature, you might try picking young dandelion greens. They are considered a delicacy in some parts of Europe. The leaves are tender and should be harvested in early spring or late fall after a frost when the bitterness disappears and before the flower heads turn to seed, which can happen overnight. Timing is of the essence when it comes to harvesting. They make great salad greens either raw or boiled. The roots have also been roasted and used as a coffee substitute. It must have been one seriously addicted coffee hound to be desperate enough to use roasted weed root as a substitute for coffee beans, but some swear it is excellent. Simply scrub the root well, bake in the oven on low heat, then finely grate it and use the same as coffee grounds.

Coffee is one thing, but for those who prefer a little stronger beverage containing alcohol, try your hand at making some sweet and ever so delicate dandelion wine. The same rules apply when harvesting the beautiful little yellow flower for winemaking as they do for food or medicine. When harvesting, be sure to gather these weeds before they get sprayed with herbicide or watered by your neighborhood canine. This could add a little bite to your otherwise fine weed wine creation.

You will only want to use the flower petals. If you want to be lazy about it, you can leave the flower heads, but you can expect it to have little more of a bitter taste. If you are meticulous about removing the green matter on the flowers and try to peel the citrus fruit very thin, avoiding the white stuff on the skin, you will produce a much more palatable wine.

The recipe below calls for 3 quarts of dandelion petals. For any recipe, you would use 2-3 quarts per gallon of wine. If you can’t pick them all in one day, throw them in the freezer until you have enough.

Dandelion Wine

3 qts dandelion flowers

1 lb golden raisins

1 gallon water

3 lbs granulated sugar (If you like dry wine, use 1/2 lb less sugar.)

2 lemons

1 orange

yeast and nutrient

Put the flowers in a large bowl. Set aside 1 pint of water and bring the remainder to a boil. Pour the boiling water over the dandelion flowers and cover tightly with cloth or plastic wrap. Leave for two days, stirring twice daily. Do not exceed this time. Pour flowers and water in large pot and bring to a low boil. Add the sugar and the peels (peel thinly and avoid any of the white pith) of the lemons and orange. Boil for one hour, then pour into a crock or plastic pail. Add the juice and pulp of the lemons and orange. Allow to stand until cool (70-75 degrees F.). Add yeast and yeast nutrient, cover, and put in a warm place for three days. Strain and pour into a secondary fermentation vessel (bottle or jug). Add the raisins and fit a fermentation trap to the vessel. Strain and rack after wine clears, adding reserved pint of water and any additional required to top up. Leave until fermentation ceases completely, then rack again. Set aside 2 months and rack and bottle. This wine must age six months in the bottle before tasting, but will improve remarkably if allowed a year.

You can substitute the raisins with white grape concentrate, dates, figs, apricots, or rhubarb instead. There are many variations with this wine.

After several weeks, the wine will “fall clear.” It will start at the neck of the jug. The wine will suddenly begin to clear as the pigments and yeast “fall.” Within 15-30 minutes, the whole batch will “fall clear” and a thick layer of very fine lees will settle across the bottom of the secondary. Do not rack the wine until it falls clear as described or you could seriously damage the wine by making it difficult to clear at all. In winemaking, patience is the highest virtue.

If you omit the body-building ingredient, dandelion wine is light and invigorating and suited perfectly for tossed salad and baked fish (especially trout). If you ferment with a body-enhancer but shave the sugar, the wine will serve well with pastas, heavier salads, fish, or fowl. Sweetened, it goes well before or after dinner. In any form, when chilled to near iciness, it is a very refreshing drink.

Now go forth and turn those weeds in a lovely wine.

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