You Just Can't Fix Bad Wine

Which is sad, but true.

While in Vermont, my mom and I went to a store that sold Vermont-made wine. Because my husband and I enjoy wine, I bought a couple of bottles. One of the bottles intrigued me because it was rhubarb wine. I like rhubarb a bit, and I thought, what the hell, I'll try it.

Hubby and I tried it last week. He tried it first, and once he had sipped it, made the most interesting face I've seen. All he'd say was that it was "different". So I tried it. Holy cow. It was the WORST wine I'd ever tasted. Dry to the point of sand-like. Kind of sour. Really unpleasant. Horrible aftertaste. I know rhubarb is not a sweet vegetable, but I figured, that, as in with pies, they'd figure out a way to counteract that whole thing, at least to a degree. I was wrong. I guess the way they chose to deal with the tart taste of the rhubarb was to add it to a dry white wine and see what happened. Ugh. It was really horrible.

I had only taken 3 sips from my glass, and my husband drank only half of his, so there was nearly an entire bottle left. I hate wasting anything, so I thought about what I could do with the rest of this atrocity. I thought about using it in cooking, but I was afraid of ruining whatever I added it to (it was that bad). So into my head popped some things I had read from a book called The Herbal Pantry. I thought, "Hey, I've got herbs. Maybe I'll add some to this horrid stuff and it'll be alright".

Yeah, no. I added Lemon Verbena and some blueberries to it. I let it sit in the dark for two days. I tried it again yesterday. Underneath the refreshing lemon and sweet blueberry was--you guessed it--tart, sour, dry, disgusting rhubarb wine. So you really can't fix bad wine. It is true. I had to dump the bottle, which hurt, let me tell you. But I didn't know what else to do with it. So sad.

However, if you have a GOOD bottle of wine at some point that you'd like to make better, take a couple of sprigs of Lemon Verbena, wash them up, and stuff them in. And if you're feeling really wild, go ahead and smush (gently) some blueberries and pop them in too. Let it sit for a couple of days in the pantry, and the wine will be very nicely flavored (and if you added the blueberries, it'll be a beautiful color too). But only use good wine. And leave that horrid rhubarb stuff on the shelf. BLECH!!