Wine Wizard Neighbors

In the borough of Buzzardville, in side by side stone cottages, there live two artists. They turn English yews into animals and tomatoes into wine.

I visited with David Walsh, one of two wine wizard neighbors at semi-mythical Two old Farts, Buzzardville Winery.

Walsh’s Northern York County home is an enchanted place that was called Buzzardville in times past. Not a buzzard lives there now, but folk art birds and other critters, inhabit Walsh’s gardens. The concrete figures seem likely to wake at night and strut along the stone walkways weaving around the artist’s homes.

All sort of curious happenings occur in Buzzardville. Green birds with wings 3 feet long stand rooted in the in the ground. Ten topiaries rule the roost after dark; but turn chameleon in daylight by pretending to be plants and melding into the mix. Bishops weed the perennial beds behind the bubbling pond at the foot of woods that Walsh created from what was lawn. A red-eyed frog peers over a classic English boxwood hedge.

Inside, pink nectar transforms into cantaloupe wine, black art in plain sight, housed in pretty glass jugs, right there, next to the refrigerator.

Walsh’s kitchen is home to the multiple vessels holding juices in various stages of fermentation. There is cherry, rhubarb rouge, mulberry verde, and tomato. Walsh said wine is conjured from “most anything.” He’s made apple, peach, watermelon, currant and others. He said elderberry produced some of the finest red wine. The youngest batch is the tomato.

Walsh denies that magic is needed for either wine making or topiary. “When you love doing it, there’s no difficulty in it,” He said.

Fruit is gathered, juices extracted, ingredients are added.

Potions of fruit, pounds of sugar, a dash of tannin, an enzyme or two and yeast, are stirred and allowed to ferment for several days. Which yeast, fermentation time and the quantities of additives vary for each recipe.

After the pulp is separated from the liquid, it is placed in large clear glass bottles and allowed to work for a couple of months. Add fifteen minutes of attention a month, to siphon off the wine from the sediment, and curiously soon, it’s time to bottle. Peaches have become “Just Peachy.” Cherries have transformed into “Virgin Cherry.” Pomegranates have become “ Pomi.” Meanwhile, “Hey, Bob-a-Rhubarb”, and “Electric Currant”, are bottled up, lying on their sides and aging in Walsh’s cellar. White wines are drinkable after 6 months. Reds need to age closer to a year

He cautions beginners to make sure everything is sterile to avoid spoiling a batch and he said that home-made wines should be kept no longer than three years.

Walsh attributes his ability to charm good wine from “most anything” to college experience and a book. (ya, wink) He shows me. It is a well-worn paperback, with print too tiny for my eyes, Terry Garvey’s “ The Joy of Home Wine Making”.  Indeed, there is a recipe for tomato wine.

But why tomato wine?

“I won’t have to give any more tomatoes away,” said Walsh. That relieving thought alone should motivate us all to make tomato wine. Zucchini wine anyone? Yes. Actually. There’s a recipe for that. But Walsh hasn’t tried it. “I do think the tomato is going to be good,” he said.

The wine making neighbors -Walsh does much of this vintner’s work with Bill Andrew- choose the fruit to use based on availability and well…. how cheap the fruit is. Walsh estimates his costs for everything to be a dollar per bottle.
They’ve come up with creative approaches to gathering. To harvest mulberries, they lay blankets beneath mulberry bushes along a busy highway and simply wait. They’ve investigated the signs stating only “Lopes” that are pervasive in Pennsylvania during the summer. They cross the York county western border to buy bushels apples for their, “Adam’s Apple.” Occasionally, they will use juice from a market for wine. This helps when extracting the juice is difficult.

“Have you ever tried to juice a pomegranate?” asked Walsh, “ They are difficult enough to eat.”

I suspect that they enjoy winemaking in part because of the creativity that comes with it. The bottles are decorated with hand-lettered labels and given their grin inducing names.

Tom Tom Tomato is the working name of the tomato wine.

Topiaries turn chameleon in daylight by pretending to be plants and melding into the mix.