Dandelion Wine

Dandelion Wine

One of the first serious books of fiction I read (and felt I understood) was Bradbury’s Dandelion Wine. The evocation of summer, for which the primitive wine was analogy, was so strong, that looking over that book half a century later, I still remember some of the descriptions and how I felt when I read them for the first time.

I was thinking of that evocativeness as I drank some dandelion wine in my brother’s zen tea house on a little pond outside Seattle. The brew was prepared by his girlfriend, Candy, who clips two bushel baskets of dandelion heads (no greens) to make something like 5.5 gallons of the stuff.



I found the dandelion wine very pleasant, not complex, but surprisingly clean (despite the visible lees in the bottom of the mason jar), slightly sweet, reminiscent of Sauvignon Blanc. More powerfully, it was an edible memento of summer that becomes more poignant as winter descends.

Thanks for the reminder! I've got a bottle that I bought not THAT long ago (can't remember where) but I was tickled to see it. And have probably saved it for a rainy day for far too long. Always been curious and I'm grateful for the notion of what to expect when I open it. (Funny: Bradbury was my first thought, too, when I saw it.)