At least for a while. Seriously, if I have to peel another bit of citrus I think I’ll be ill. I’ve got another batch of wine brewing, and this time it’s made from oranges. I peeled, juiced and otherwise mangled about 60 blood oranges and one of those tiny crates of clementines.
If you’ve never heard of blood oranges, they’re just like regular oranges, except that the edible part is a deep dark red. When you pry one apart you feel like you’ve just pulled the heart of some sacrifical victim. You should be standing at the top of an Aztec pyramid with the orange in one hand and a flint knife in the other while the giant pitcher-shaped body of the “Hey Kool-Aid!” guy thrashes and dies on the altar behind you. Sadly, my kitchen is rather small for the thousands of screaming followers that you’d need to make the illusion complete.
On the other hand, I did get to enjoy the visceral thrill of tossing all of these sections into a wine press and crushing them down to a thin paste. The early stages are easy. The bits of orange slide around and compact themselves until they run out of room. Then they start bursting. Little popping and crunhing sounds accompanied by a trickle of dark red juice… You’ve got to keep an eye on things and make sure you don’t turn the screw too fast, cause it’ll start squirting all over. I’ve got the countertop stains to prove it.
So yeah, my hands smell like citrus and parts of my kitchen look like an abbitoir. I’ve got a five gallon glass carboy in my sink that looks like King Kong just donated blood. But if the wine comes out tasting half as good as the juice that went in, it’ll all be worth it.
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