IT'S ALL ABOUT THE BERRIES

PIKE'S CREEK WINERY BLUEBERRY WINE

BUNCHBERRIES ON BLOOM ROAD

Tuesday, 7:30 AM.  73 degrees F at the ferry dock, 70 on the back porch.  Wind WSW, light with moderate gusts.  The sky is partly cloudy, the humidity 69%.  The barometer is falling, now at 29.99".  Highs today will be around 80, falling into the 60's Wednesday and Thursday, which will bring a chance of rain.  The week thereafter will have highs in the mid-70's, with mixed skies.  It is a breezy, pleasant summer morning.
   On Sunday I introduced readers to the new Pike's Creek Winery and its berry wines, and promised a wine tasting report.  We did just that, cracked a bottle of their blueberry wine and shared it with friends Andy and Judy out on Bloom Road.
   We liked it very much.  It is a crisp, dry fruit wine, not sweet at all,  that went very nicely with pungent goat cheese, and an aged sharp cheddar.  It has a faint but pleasant bouquet, and is a very clear blue, no sediment at all.  It is strong enough that a glass apiece was quite sufficient before dinner.  We recommend it highly.
   In other berry news, bunchberry, AKA dwarf cornel, Cornus canadensis, in the Dogwood Family, is ripe along Bloom Road.  The bright red bunchberries are edible but taste rather mealy, and are best left for the birds; but the plant makes a fine native woodland ground cover, and like its close relative the flowering dogwood of the east and south, is beautiful in flower.