Bookends
I'm hard pressed to tell you my favorite Keweenaw season. They all have something that makes them unique, whether thats biting insects or biting winds. The changing seasons also bring different wild bounties to gather. In spring, I spend countless long days boiling sap to make delicious maple syrup. Fast forward to the fall and trees across the region are loaded with apples of all shapes and sizes. Combine the two, and you've got a tasty wine I like to call Bookends.
Bookending both sides of the summer (or winter, depending on how you look at things), maple syrup making and apple picking are two of my favorite harvests. Lucky for me, the combination of these two ingredients also makes for an excellent wine.
I bottled the first batch of this wine in May 2019. It's nearly 14% ABV but goes down smooth thanks to the subtle sweetness from both the apples and maple syrup. Too bad I only wound up with fourteen bottles from my first batch. I'm looking forward to making more of this in the future! The label is derived from a photo I took while on contract for the Keweenaw National Historical Park. You never know when photos of fancy leather-bound ledgers will come in handy!
I bottled a second batch of Bookends in 2024, nearly four years after I started it. That one kind of got away from me... as did the ABV. I must have been feeling loose in 2020 when I fermented it because I thought 15.5% ABV was perfectly reasonable for wine. This was near the peak of my "I'm gonna be a drunkard" days before I realized I'd probably enjoy my wines more if they weren't so flammable.
