Orange Wine 2020 - Fifth Bottle (B6), 15th October 2021

Friday was not the most relaxing fun day that I have ever had. Two hours of it was spent lying back in a dentist's chair with my mouth wide open as the dentist said things like "Don't worry about the pain: that's normal," and "Try to relax!". In the end he saved my molar and that is worth 120 minutes of discomfort. By the time 6 p.m. rolled around I was ready for my fair share of wine. By the time Taskmaster was on I was sufficiently numbed by orange wine and whisky to be enjoying the day again.

No photos taken on 15 October but this
was what I should have worn to the dentist's

Orange Wine 2020 - Fourth Bottle (B4), 15th August 2021

It was my first full day back home after two glorious weeks on holiday, and it was a restful, relaxing near-ordinary day. Okay, so I did about two and a half hours work, but I also made a cake (gooseberry orange drizzle), had a short walk, bathed with Claire, started my blackcurrant wine and watched an episode of The Crown. We also drank this bottle of orange wine to smoked haddock fishcakes, which was an excellent combination. Both are strong flavours and I could understand not liking either. However, I think both are fab!

Gooseberry & Orange Drizzle Cake

Orange Wine 2018 - Eleventh Bottle (A3), 22nd July 2021

Mostly I made quiche whilst this wine was in play. England is having a heatwave at the moment - so a perfect time to be baking. We are off to Cambridge on Friday evening and need an easy meal during the journey - hence the quiche. A glass or two of orange wine to help the process along is never a bad thing, particularly when the pastry starts falling apart. Orange wine, though, is not one to write reams about: it is a reliable white that has a citrus kick. Finishing the bottle was no hardship.

Oh - I did my first ever Lateral Flow test.

My quiche and lateral flow test

Orange Wine 2019 - Final Bottle (4), 11th June 2021

We are having a proper June. May was exceptionally wet, but this month has been glorious: hot and sunny. Our garden is looking wonderful, and we drank some of this bottle outside parading the grounds. The rest was drunk to an Indian Takeout and an episode of ER. Perhaps not the most exciting of Fridays, but precisely what I wanted. The orange wine matched that description too.

Our garden in the evening sun

Orange Wine 2020 - Third Bottle (A6), 21st May 2021

I downed this bottle (or more than my fair share of it) on Friday night in a state of existential glumness. Earlier in the day I had seen the doctor who told me to eat more (not a terrible instruction) but there may be a (not particularly serious) internal issue, and he has prescribed me pills (the potential side effects of which sound horrific). I am 50 (soon to be 51). I am too young to be on pills. I try to avoid taking even paracetamol unless I have a particularly bad headache. Anyway, I have yet to take one and I did not really taste the wine.

Fully clothed on my bathroom scales

Orange Wine 2020 - Second Bottle (A4), 15th April 2021

Somehow Thursday nights have become a Full Bottle Night and that is not necessarily a Good Thing. When Lockdown eventually ends my liver is likely to breathe a sigh of relief. 

The wine was chosen to go with Kittery Baked Fish and accompanied it nicely. Sharp citrus flavours go well with cod. Earlier in the day I watched a tree surgeon swing from ropes, taking branches off the hated Sycamore. Before he left I asked him to take another limb off our awful Goat Willow. I do actually like trees - quite a lot - but it helps if they bear fruit.

The Awful Goat Willow

Orange Wine 2021 - The Making Of...

One of the 'First World Problems' caused by Covid 19 is the sheer amount of queuing that it creates. Whilst one might point to the 120,000 deaths in the UK, the mental health crisis, the vast unemployment and the failure to see loved ones, it was the time spent standing in lines that annoyed me most on Saturday, 6th March. The greengrocer, the butcher and the post office all had long, slow-moving queues and by the time that I got home Claire had to calm me down with cake.

A crate of 24 oranges

Making things better, though, the greengrocer had set aside a box of 24 oranges for me - large Spanish oranges looking like they had been plucked from their tree mere hours ago. 

I started making my wine that afternoon by thinly peeling half of the oranges and covering the peel in two pints of boiling water. This is always the most tedious bit of making orange wine and this year I separated it out of the process by making it my first task, leaving the orange peel to percolate in its water for 24 hours. I did a particularly poor job of avoiding the pith and if this wine turns out too bitter, that will be the explanation. 

A particularly poor job of avoiding the pith

On Sunday afternoon, 7th March, I squeezed all 24 oranges - changing hands every three oranges so as to avoid a painful and overused shoulder. This is a sticky job and required frequent handwashing.

Some of the oranges with outer skin removed

With the oranges being larger than most years I got far more juice - 6 pints (including all the bits of flesh). I added 6¾ pints of cold water and the two pints of water that had been covering the peel. Into this I poured 5½ lbs of sugar and gave it a good stir. I then started 2 teaspoons of yeast fermenting in half a pint of water with a teaspoon of sugar and put this into the mix once fermentation had begun. I added a teaspoon of pectolase and 1½ teaspoons of nutrient. Though my usual timetable would have me putting the wine into its demijohn on Friday, it was Book Group that night (Grownups by Marian Keyes - hated by some, loved by others) so I did this all on Saturday 13th March instead. There was little to sieve out so the process was quick. I am left with two demijohns of pure sunshine.

Two demijohns of sunshine

Orange Wine 2020 - First Bottle (B5), 6th March 2021

This is another successful orange wine. It is difficult to wax lyrical about it when it tastes pretty much the same as every vintage made. The wine is sharp, clear and has the expected citrus taste. I think it drier than 2019's batch, but that is neither a good nor a bad thing. We drank it mostly whilst making a spinach & bacon quiche - I was in charge of the pastry and Claire the filling. We were meant to save some for the Saturday Night Snarkalong (Cowboys and Aliens) but the bottle was empty by then. The film wasn't nearly as camp as the title suggested, and that was a disappointment. We switched it off half way through and made our way to bed.

A Hebe in our garden

If you want to see how this wine was made, click here.

Orange Wine 2019 - Fifth Bottle (3), 31st January - 2nd February 2021

Sunday night was another virtual dinner party with Rachel & Duncan, this time to celebrate Duncan's birthday. Our Zoom screens went on at 6, we drank our aperitifs and began cooking a Malaysian Chicken Curry from Padian Foods. Early on in the process I opened this orange wine, which was butter smooth and delicious. We had an excellent evening: over three hours of cooking, eating, drinking, conversation and laughter. Once this pandemic ends we will continue these virtual sessions.

I also made biscuits that day, and this is them in progress

Orange Wine 2016 - Final Bottle (A1), 26th-27th January 2021

Orange wine is not one that becomes steadily better with age. This was not an awful bottle but was distinctly mid-week. It had that hint of fortified wine that older bottles often acquire. On a personal level very little happened of any note on the two days that we drank this. I made a fabulous beetroot & goat's cheese risotto but that was about it. On a national level, the UK passed 100,000 deaths from Corona Virus. That is about the population of York.

A Hellebore flowering in our garden

Orange Wine 2019 - Fourth Bottle (1), 28th November 2020

This bottle was better than I had remembered. It was not cloyingly sweet and there was a pleasant depth to it. We drank the wine at the end of one of those dank days which just makes you want to hibernate. Instead, though, I made a Christmas pudding (now to be stored until Boxing Day) and created my first panel of our Advent Window (lots of stars - relatively easy and a bit dull). In the evening we ate 'Hot & Sour Guinea Fowl' and watched Planes, Trains and Automobiles. Gently amusing, but no more.

The Christmas Pudding before 8 hours of steaming

Orange Wine 2018 - Tenth Bottle (A5), 10th-11th November 2020

Hurrah! I'm not dying. My blood tests came back on Wednesday and everything is normal. The weight loss is down to additional exercise and no additional food. Therefore I need to eat more. That is my kind of remedy! I could pretend that we opened this bottle in celebration, but it was opened on Tuesday to accompany The Great British Bake Off - which is now in its closing stages. So, instead, we finished it in celebration - and I am relieved that I no longer have to take my blood pressure twice a day.

Taken on 10 November

Orange Wine 2018 - Ninth Bottle (B4), 14th -15th October 2020

We drank the majority of this bottle with a Chinese Takeaway from G-Wu, and very fine Chinese food it was too. A chilled orange wine feels like the right one to have in these circumstances. The day itself was not my best day of holiday ever. In the morning we buried Kato (grave digging, even for a cat, is hard work) and in the afternoon I went for a rubbish walk round semi-industrial areas of Batley.

Thursday was better: it was the 25th anniversary of Claire and my first kiss, and we celebrated by walking the Malham Round. You can't beat a good bit of limestone pavement.

A good bit of limestone pavement

Orange Wine 2019 - Third Bottle (5), 3rd-4th September 2020

This orange wine is too sweet. The base taste is good and certainly the wine is easy drinking, but orange wine should be dry and this is not.

I was adventurous with my cooking on Thursday night: I did a Mexican fish-dish which involved a spicy marinade with many ingredients, and both frying and grilling. The result, other than filling the kitchen with smoke and setting off alarms, was spectacular - if I do say so myself. Otherwise both Thursday and Friday have been unremarkable, though my morning walks both days have started with walking Claire towards work.

Taken on 4th September

Orange Wine 2018 - Eighth Bottle (B2), 4th-5th August 2020

Being on holiday is great. The week I am back at work is somewhat less so. There is a feel of continual fire-fighting where everything appears more urgent than it probably is. On Tuesday night, which was when most of this bottle was drunk, I was cook for the evening and made a fish pie. Fish is meant to be good brain food - and by the end of that particular working day, anything to help my brain was welcome. The orange wine probably did less of a good job in that respect, but was just as appreciated. There was only half a glass each left for Wednesday.

Some Victorian piano music found lurking on our shelves
Taken on 4th August

Orange Wine 2018 - Seventh Bottle (A4), 21st July 2020

A Tuesday night bottle. You can tell that we are still on Lockdown. When Mary came over on Sunday, she asked whether Covid 19 had turned us into a Chunk, a Hunk, a Monk or a Drunk, and for us the answer is "a Drunk". Not an ideal thing to be, but right at the moment life could be significantly better. Having opened the bottle at 6:30, it was inevitable that we would finish it, and I do make a splendid bottle of orange wine.

Taken on 21 July

Kato explaining how life could be better

Orange Wine 2018 - Sixth Bottle (B3), 27th-28th May 2020

After having a rare night off the booze on Tuesday, we opened a bottle of orange wine on Wednesday to drink with smoked haddock in a parsley sauce. And we didn't (quite!) finish it. Now Claire's work patterns are 12-7 two days on, two days off, I do the cooking on the days on, and Claire does it on the days off. She says that it is lovely to come home to dinner having been cooked for her.

Neither Wednesday nor Thursday had any particular event of note. Which is about par.

To relieve the boredom, however,

I dressed up as Michaelangelo's David

Orange Wine 2018 - Fifth Bottle (B6), 5th May 2020

Whilst I am on holiday this week, Tuesday was a day to be idle. On Monday I had walked nearly thirty thousand steps, so a day of doing little was excusable.

We drank this orange wine after a lovely Zoom conversation with Mary. Social isolation is all well and good, but I do miss my friends. We chatted for nearly an hour and a half, covering everything from Jane Austen to haircuts, and then Claire and I shared this orange wine.

Taken on 5th May - 

Socially distancing outside a shop

Orange Wine 2017 - Final Bottle (A4), 31st January 2020

So, we are now out of the European Union, though I was in bed and asleep by the time it happened. Presumably there were fireworks, but I am not sorry to have missed them. I coped with the evening by drinking more than I ought, including this bottle of Orange Wine - which was more bitter than I remembered it. Still, that matched my mood.

A photo taken on 30 Jan

The boat is called 'Laughing Gravy'

Orange Wine 2016 - Eleventh Bottle (A3), 14th May 2020

Thursday was not a good day. There is water dripping through our kitchen ceiling and I found out that Eric from Brooke North's post room and Renate have both died. Eric was killed by prostate cancer and Renate by a weak heart. She died alone and in November, and that makes me sad. A genealogist is trying to find out if there are any relatives, but I will not be able to shed any light on that. Anyway, we had finished the orange wine by the time I was rung by Mike about Renate, so I did not raise a glass to her. Next bottle, though ...

In memory of a fellow bassoonist

And here we both are, about 7 years ago