Smokey Mountain Breakdown

Peek-a-Boo Peach Brandy
This photo is a repost from 2005. I thought on this cold drizzly day, that it might be a good time to talk about the love/hate relationship between the folk of this area and "spirits" and a few disjointed musings and stories.

This is how I made this brandy...

"Peek-a-boo Peach Brandy is made by layering sugar and peaches in a large crock or jar. You stir the mixture for the first seven days for about 3 minutes to release the fermenting gases. On the seventh day, add the juice of four lemons and a box of raisins. You wrap the jar in a paper bag and hide it in a cool dark place. Check in about 21 days and decant and bottle if you wish. It will result in a potent spirit by Thanksgiving at which you can "peek" at it and enjoy some. You can add some moonshine(or vodka) to make it even stronger and more potent. The left over fruit is really wonderful spooned over vanilla ice cream. By Christmas, it should have quite a kick to it."

My brother made this according to the way my mother used to make it this past year and I believe it turned out quite well. He did not vent the gases and buried the jars. None of the jars exploded though he did say that one of them didn't seem to ferment properly. The sugar was not dissolved. Mother always just hid the jar in a paper bag in the bottom of a washstand that the TV always sat on. By Christmas, it was perfect.

Mine turned out really well and had quite a kick to it. I'm afraid that I got into it early and got quite tipsy.

The Hidden History of Apples in America

One of my neighbors has one of the original apple trees in his yard. Once, long ago, this area was completely covered in homesteads with apple orchards. This amazing old tree is the size of a live oak. It's so old, I don't think I've actually ever seen apples on it, but people "scrumping" them as children. The tree is on the old Alvin Hall homeplace. People don't realize how big apple trees can actually get. Most of our current varieties are dwarf or semi-dwarf.

There are many things that people make out of apples here. Apple butter, apple jelly, apple stack cake, apple pie, apple sauce....it goes on like Bubba Gump's shrimp list. But it still doesn't truly account for the preponderance of apple trees and the history of apples in the area going back to when this was the original western frontier.

When I read Michael Pollan's The Botany of Desire and his amazing essay on the apple, it suddenly made sense. Apples were brought here to make hard cider and applejack. Plain and simple, there were no wheat fields and beer was unavailable. No doubt, apples are a healthy snack but you can only eat so many of them. And you can make hard cider even out of the "spitters"...those pippins that have nearly inedible fruit.

And this area is rich in distillation history, obviously. It most likely started there...with the apple.

Liquor Never Passed My Lips!!!

I hear this a lot.

Yet, the elderberry "cordial" I make is very popular as a "cough" medicine. I make it by mixing up a strong elderberry syrup and sometimes I steep some horsemint or wild ground mint in it for the cough syrup. Then I cut it about half with moonshine. It's very tasty. And potent.

I soak my famous white fruit cake in the plain elderberry cordial. I am, of course, a heathen Episcopalian. When I told my mountain friends that I'd made a really big one of these fruitcakes, liberally dosed in moonshine, for my church's coffee hour one advent Sunday, they were scandalized. Even more so, when I told them there wasn't a crumb left of the 10 pound cake.

My grandfather used to soak his fruitcakes in his own homemade blackberry wine. I've played around with the blackberry wine, but it's so delicious, I never seem to be able to keep it around too long. I may give it another go this season if they haven't completely razed my new blackberry spots up on Faith Mountain. They have these really big water cooler jars at Lowes that look very promising for this.

But, it seems that under certain circumstances, liquor may indeed pass one's lips as long as it is called something else.

Discussing the Merits of Fine Wine at the Hall Family Reunion.

I was honored this year by an invite to the Hall Family Reunion held yearly on Hall's Top. Friend Scott invited me.

The Hall family is huge and is spread out all over the country, but they make the annual pilgrimage to Hall's Top each year. A spread of covered dishes stretches the length of a football field at the site of the old church. I can not begin to describe the variety of foodstuffs available. Every little twig and branch of this enormous family brings enough food to feed an army. And like some reverse action of the loaves and fishes...it's gone pretty damn quick.

I, unfortunately, made us a tad late. Won't make that mistake again.

I got cornered by a quirky but charming old gentleman and his wife while Scott was trying to fill up his six foot nine frame with banana pudding. The old fellow was quite talkative, and she was very quiet. Seemed like she had spent a lifetime trying to get a word in edgewise and had finally just admitted defeat.

They had come up from south Georgia, I believe. We discussed exactly how they were related to the Halls. Seems he was born up here on the mountain and his family moved away. Asking how someone is related to anyone here is like asking a hypochondriac "How are you feeling today?" It's a loaded question and you better have the time to listen to the answer.

I was a captive audience since Scott was still indulging his lust for pudding.

I think the conversation came around to wine via talking of religion. He shared with me that he was an "evangelical". I'm not sure exactly which sect he was from. I may have even asked him about his church. Probably in an attempt to get away from the convoluted familial relationships that were making my head hurt.

I think I said...and this was what got me into trouble..."Well, I'm an Episcopalian and we have wine in church for communion."

I may have even gone so far as to say that I thought the self-control involved in moderation required one to exercise their free will in a more stringent way than simple abstinence.

And then I probably totally gnawed my foot off by talking about my own wine making experiments.

So, I really deserved the earful I got on the evils of alcohol.

Not quite ready to give up yet...since I hadn't reached the point his wife was where she knew that resistance was futile...I said, "Well, I don't know, I had some really nice wine when I was traveling in France. They even water wine down for children at meals there."

He pauses and says, "Well, now...I take that back. Sacramental wine is okay. There was a Mogen David plant near where we lived up in New York, and I suppose that wine is okay. They had some really good wine. For sacramental use."

I didn't know what to say to that. I'm wondering if he knows what the MD stands for in MD 20/20. I'm remembering the widely varied sacramental uses of MD 20/20 that involved brown paper bags.

His wife and I exchanged knowing glances as I finally understood.

Scott finally rears his head out of whatever vat of banana pudding he has located and notes that I am in need of rescuing.

He makes our excuses for us and we go join the singing.

Which is divine and transcendent as usual, and completely sober.

********************************************

A wonderful book on the Appalachian wine making tradition is The Foxfire Book of Appalachian Wine Making. It has some wonderful colorful stories in it. I love the one about where they tried to make pumpkin wine. It didn't turn out so well.