Art of Living Festival

This year marks the second Art of Living Festival in downtown Tahlequah.  Our Trio, Tibbits & McCracken plays at 11 a.m. at the Cherokee Courthouse Square.  Events and activities are planned for both the Square and Norris Park throughout the day, so plan to come for an extended festival. 

I've heard that several vineyards will have booths.  I'm sort of a fan of regional wines, because I have found that they have a brighter flavor than wines shipped from afar.   My fave is Post Familie Red Muscadine.  It makes a nice base for wine gravies and sauces, as well as for sipping.  The White Muscadine is nice also. 

Oklahoma's vineyard near Vinita, maybe Route 66, has a lovely raspberry wine.  These tasting booths are a great way to compare several wines and learn your own preferences.  Others are Stone Bluff near Broken Arrow and Nuyaka down around Okmulgee or thereabouts.

I make wine, or used to.  Recently, I donated my winemaking supplies and brew supplies to my son-in-law so that someone young and strong could keep the family tradition.  Last year at Strawberry time, I cleaned a couple of flats and made nice strawberry wine.  Hey.  Think about tossing gold coins into a fountain as a less-expensive hobby.    The work and toil, lifting and monitoring, washing and sterilizing, stirring and bottling, driving and shopping are downsides.  But nothing is more delicious than nice home-made strawberry wine.  And here's a tip I learned the expensive way:  Catch the end of berry season.  You'll find overripe flats at a discount at the side of the road, from desperate strawberry growers who overproduced more than they could sell to passersby.  You will have to work a little harder at making sure you don't introduce any mold into your batch, but will save $2 to $10 per flat. 

I always wash my berries in a clean sink, then lay them out on towels to dry thoroughly... ideally just as soon as I get them home.  Ideally, you could dehydrate clean berries overnight before sending them to the mashup, and you'd get an even richer and sweeter intense flavor.

Here's a secret:  If you are lazy or caught off-season, you can use frozen Stilwell Strawberries from the store.  They're packed in sugar, which sort of takes away the vintner's ability to get a quick dry wine.  But it will give you  a richly flavorful wine far exceeding any that you can buy. 

I'm sort of clever at making wine from whatever's at hand.  For Murder Mystery Weekend, we took some nice cranberry strawberry wine made from a bottle of juice from the store.  Just look for juice without added citric acid and other preservatives--- they are present to prevent wine from becoming so.  Uncap the bottle for an hour.  Then recap it and let it set for a week before you decide whether to add yeast.  A word of advice from experience:  Don't leave active sparkling wine in the car for a few days or you'll get a jar explosion and wine will seep into the rug.  That can be very stinky.

Look us up Saturday, May 15 at 11 a.m. on the Square.  Bring a lawn chair, I bet.  And don't miss the Squeeze-Inn Reunion in Norris Park where the Squeeze-Inn once was.