Wine & Blackberrying

These two things are intimately intertwined in my mind even today and I will tell you why.

Blackberrying = picking of blackberries from hedgerows and fields. During one of the school half term holidays commonly known as “Blackberry Week” we would trundle down to the fields with my Mother and pick blackberries from the hedgerows…… BUT the best and plumpest blackberries were to be found in two places:-

At the bottom of the fields that used to stretch for miles between Kenton Bar and the airport there was a rail track – I presume it was either a goods line or used to transport coal from place to place. You could follow this track for miles, anyway I digress. The embankments of the line were covered, yes COVERED, with blackberry bushes or plants or whatever name they call them. Anyway the embankments were prime blackberry picking territory and we would come back from those trips laden with fruit to make jam and pies – oh innocent days…………

The second place that great blackberries could be found was near the electricity substation at Kenton Bank Foot. Maybe the electromagnetic waves radiating from the substation mutated the plants genes making them into über-blackberries?

Wine
Wind the clock forward from those innocent years to the age at which young malchicks discover a taste for alcohol. Unfortunately alcohol costs money and a paper round just does not cut the mustard on the beer purchasing front – so why not make our own? To this end I used to make wine from wine kits, beer from beer kits and ‘speciality’ wines from everything including pears, tea, parsley, oranges – basically anything that could be fermented – I even tried making wine from fruit jam one time but it was awful. As an aside – a loathsome character whom I have mentioned from time to time, Wire bull, Viper Velma or Bullhead as he was sometimes known, tried to piss through my letterbox after having gotten pissed up on my home made parsley wine – I will never forget so Wire Bull, if I find out where you live now, you better seal up your letterbox ‘cos I have a bladder full just for you…..

Where is this all leading? you are rightly asking yourself about now – well put 2 and 2 together. Alcohol costs money, I have no money. Fruit costs money, I have little money. Blackberries grow wild = free fruit. If I could get free fruit and nick some sugar from my Mum’s pantry – yahoo free alcohol. A Eureka moment occurs and yes myself and Mensforth (Now Ghost Of Mensforth since the dolt is dead) itty off down to the tracks to gather said free fruit only to our dismay the tracks are now being used by the Metro trains.

Great big and bolshy fences cut us off from our free bounty, however we will not be beaten. Some bounders had cut a hole or two in the fences – primarily in the places where for generations folks had crossed the old abandoned tracks and this gave myself and GOM access to the larder. Next problem – it is illegal to trespass on the railway as we all know now we are grown up men but in those days a sign that read access forbidden was just an invitation to go ahead at any cost. So – we would gather fruit, hear an approaching train, hide in the bushes until said train had passed and then re-start the gathering. We would gather 9 maybe 10 pounds of fruit and then take it home to make wine. I had all the kit, syphon tubes, muslin bags, sterilisers, demi-johns [By the way I know how big a demi-john is holding approximately an imperial gallon (8 imperial pints) but how big is a whole john? and do they actually exist?)

By now your probably also asking yourself what the hell this has to do with Kenton Bar Estate? –  well it’s like this. The houses all had big windows and wide window sills. A demi-john and probably even a whole john could easily be situated on a bedroom or kitchen window sill in order to take advantage of the abundant sunlight to warm the wine and aid fermentation, yes in those days we had sunshine not like today’s permanent cloud cover. Did the genius pair Ryder & Yates envisage this usage when they designed homes with such wide windows sills? We will never know the truth of that question but it is intriguing and heart-warming to think that they might have.

We called our brew “Chateau Metro” after the source of the fruit and we had three vintages but I forget what years exactly – probably 1982, 1983 and a cheeky little 1984. The wine was drinkable and rather reminiscent of Beaujolais – light fruity and relatively sweet.

 
I wonder if any kids today still make wine and beer at home? I think it is probably more likely that they are growing their own marijuana dope plants and synthesising crystal meth…..

Kenton Bar Pyramid Appreciation Society