Russian berries' wine

A central-Russia berry wine...This is not about wine in the sense that this fermented beverage is not made out of grapes, but it was a very nice experience that I must thank Slava for : The "wine" had deep small-berries aromas, some chocolate too, very pleasant and asking for a refill.
In Russia, people prepare routinely their own food from vegetables and fruits grown in their garden or in the forest, and many happen to make some sort of wine which is a better drink that many wines found in the shops. Here Slava made his wine out of Aronya (арония) berries, grown on a bush-size tree, the picking of which is in october, very soon, that's why the berries below look very ripe. I'll look how it is named in French and English but I'm not familiar with this tree, which is probably also growing in western Europe.

Aroniya berriesAsked about his winemaking, Slava says that he mixed the berries with water and sugar (not much, he said, I understood a kilogram or two)) and had it fermented one month and a half. Speaking of volumes, he made some 20 liters of this berry wine. The fermentation started by itself 4 or 5 days after the initial mix, he says. After a week of fermentation, he pressed the berries with a small hand press (see below) and the fermentation continued in the blend of the resulting juices for a total of one month and a half, on the lees. No filtration, he just bottled the upper wine in jugs and left the lees at the bottom. The small pressSlava is a surprising guy, he lives in the middle of a forested area deep in Russia, in a large pre-revolutionary family house that he repairs progressively. The house, which is part of an unordered village without shops and has about 20 houses, overviews the taïga landscape and a river with fish. When you go walk in the taïga, for example for mushrooms, you must be very careful and keep vocal contact with the friends/pickers of your party because getting lost in there is dangerous, you could walk very long distances without meeting any inhabited land. I happen to get lost in the Loire when looking for mushrooms but here I'd better not... Slava outside his homeWe stayed about a week with him and that's only after a few days that I asked him what he made for a living before he retired. He said (he didn't boast and if I hadn't asked, I would not have guessed) he was an engineer serving the site of strategic missiles in the region of Lvov, in western Ukraine.... I don't know his whereabouts before he settled here, but it's been 15 years or so that he bought this house and began to renovate it.
The river in the far is unusually low, this is the result of the severe drought of this year. It shoud recover a larger size during the winter and especially in spring, when all the snow melts. The houseI saw quite a few traditional Russian village houses and I have the feeling of something in common with Japanese traditional houses, oddly : Like in Japan, the house is in wood, not tightly isolated from the outside (you freeze in a Japanese traditional house in winter), and protected from the grounds frost by an air cushion. Actually, inside the Russian traditional house, some parts are open on the outside air and some parts are more tightly isolated and rooms there surround the central brick stove which plays the role of a bread oven, a cook stove (usually for two pots), a heater and a bed : yes, a bed, as above the brick stove, close to the ceiling, there is a large flat space designed for sleep. As the stove is in bricks, the heat up there is mild and perfectly fit for comfortable sleeping. I'll post a video later on such a traditional Russian stove. Angkor in RussiaSlava also helps beginning to renovate the local church with a few other villagers, as funds have been allocated in that purpose I love Maya-like monuments overcome by nature, and the slow rebuild of a church neglected during so many years of soviet regime is poignant.
See the video shot around this dilapidated church which stands barely a hundred meters or so from Slava's house (with the woods around it, you don't even see it from there actually). Slava clears the trees standing close to the church; The remaining beams have been brought outside for removal so that architects can in the near future make plans for the reconstruction. See inside the big brick stove on the left corner. I've driven Slava's UAZ !I must also thank him for letting me drive his dark green UAZ (YA3 in Cyrillic), which became during this trip my new dream vintage vehicule, dethroning the Volga M 24 of the 1970s' and 1980s' which has virtually disappeared from the Russian roads nowadays. This type of UAZ is still made by the Russian automaker, it's named the UAZ Hunter, and as its name tells it, it's an off-road vehicule.
Here's a short video of Slava in this heavy-duty dirt- and mud-roads vehicule perfectly fit for Russia's backcountry. This 4-wheel drive is also considered as very easy and cheap to fix. Beyond its use by the armed forces, it's quite common in the countryside.
If some Russian oligarch reads this story and wants to be a cool guy, I'd love so much have one of these UAZ delivered to me for my Loire weekends... On weekends, Slava receives sometimes friends in his large house. Recently there were in addition to Lena, Vadim and me, a couple family with their daughter in her early teens, and in the evening, Slava took his guitar and sung for us all. I guess he used to play music during his long months while stationed in western Ukraine, and what I can say is that he plays and sings well. There's nothing like such an improvised evening with toasts of vodka accompanied with zakuski... The young girl also joined as you can hear on this recording of mine. Water, wind...Last video : I was shooting a nature-morte video of this bucket filled with rain water ondulating with the wind, when one of the lovely cats of the house showed up as if to play in my movie. He too wants his 2 minutes of celebrity. That's a рыжик or RiJik in Russian, a red-hair cat. Russian lesson # 1 : The Rijik qualificative has several use, like there is one for humans : a red-hair man will be called a рыжий or rijii, and a red-hair woman a рыжая. There are even red/organge mushrooms (we picked lots of mushrooms around there) which are called рыжики or rijiki (plural)...

Comments

[Sean]

I didn't know that Russia had a good climate for vineyards. Do they export many types of wine? Also,are there certain regions in Russia that grapes and other berries thrive?

[ganoderma cafe]

this is a great blog.I love your blog.