Blue Ridge Country Sept/Oct 2023 - 10

Sweet, tart grape jelly
Grapes Gathering and Grandsons
The grandsons' good work in the processes of transforming grapes into
jelly is rewarding with its spread onto warm homemade bread.
TEXT AND PHOTO BY BRUCE INGRAM | PHOTO STYLING BY JANETTE SPENCER
S
has a longstanding agreement
andy Gates, who lives a little
over a mile down our rural
Botetourt County, Virginia
road from Elaine and me,
with
us. Every September, Sandy grants us
grape gathering rights in exchange for
a jar of Elaine's homemade wineberry
jam. It's fair bartering as my wife's jam
sublimely complements any homemade
biscuit or bread.
Sandy's are some of the most productive
summer grape vines in the area.
We visit when the globes have ripened
just enough that their tartness is at its
peak, but not so ripe that the songbirds
have visited before us.
Arriving with a stepladder and a
large brown bucket, I ascend and sever,
then drop grape clusters into the container
that Elaine cradles with one hand
while the other steadies the ladder. After
about 10 minutes, the bucket brims
with grape clusters. Then it's time to
make the short drive home and call our
daughter Sarah, who along with her
husband David and their sons, Sam,
age 10, and Eli, age 8, live across the
hollow from us.
While Elaine looks on, Eli
spreads his sourdough bread
with homemade grape jelly
while Sam is already eating
his bread.
Our grandsons know the routine
about grape gathering day. The four of
us are soon sitting around a table on our
sundeck, and painstakingly plucking
hundreds of grapes from their stems.
Next, it's time to rinse the grapes,
place them in a pot, cover the fruit with
water, and cook 10 to 15 minutes " to
make juice. " We pour the juice through
a strainer, separating out the seeds and
skins, a prelude to chilling the liquid
overnight.
The following evening, the serious
business of making jelly begins. First,
Elaine pours the juice through cheesecloth
to remove tartrate crystals that
form overnight. Then she empties the
juice into a large kettle, adds pectin and
brings the mixture to a boil. After sugar
is added and the mixture again comes
to a boil, the sweet, tarty aroma of
But few things in life are as emotionally satisfying as
gathering wild edibles and transforming them into something
as tasty as homemade summer grape jelly.
10 BLUERIDGECOUNTRY.COM
soon-to-be-jelly dominates our kitchen
airspace.
Last, my sweetheart pours the mixture
into jars, add lids, positions them in
a water bath, and after a while removes
them. As Elaine always says, " All that's
left now is to listen for the 'happy pop'
of lids sealing...the sounds of a successful
effort. "
In a good year of grape gathering,
we'll " put up " six jars of jelly...perhaps
some would say not much of payoff
for two evenings of toil. But few things
in life are as emotionally satisfying as
gathering wild edibles and transforming
them into something as tasty as
homemade summer grape jelly.
This belief is confirmed when Sam
and Eli come over for dinner a few
weeks later to claim the reward for their
labor.
Elaine
has
baked sourdough
bread, and the boys experience the joy
of spreading homemade jelly (which
they helped create) over hot, homemade
bread. Each youngster asks for
a second serving, and I confess that I
consume three slices. So, yes, I would
propose that that evening alone makes
our efforts worthwhile.
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Blue Ridge Country Sept/Oct 2023

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