The Apple Wine Odyssey and the Failure of Capitalism

Sep 13, 2024

This is a bit of a departure from my normal beat, and it honestly feels good to leave the more depressing stuff for another time. Trust me, I'll do my best.

Fear not - we haven't yet run out of maddening truth-that-is-stranger-than-fiction in this country and I don't dare to imagine that we will any time soon. So there will be more of that, but first - my tribute to Autumn and the best part of fall - the harvest.

The Odyssey

It's fall and when you live in a farming community, everything is about the harvest. There are tractors on the highway and dust in the air that makes for big, red sunsets, and all the work that went into the crops and into our gardens has finally come to fruition.

Beyond the obvious metaphor of reaping and sowing that has endless application in political banter (oops - sorry, we're not going there) one of the highlights of the season for me is making wine from fruit I don't have to pay for. Actually, this may well be the only good thing about fall that I'm aware of in my little world, and it does ease the dread of the approaching long, cold winter at least a little bit.

Usually this wine is in the form of chokecherries because they're plentiful and easy to get and we have a huge Schubert chokecherry tree in our yard that used to give us piles of fruit. Either that or Concord grapes because we have one vine that completely covers our back deck and is always loaded down with grapes, but I'll try pretty much anything, at least once.

Our yard is also home to a wonderful Goodland apple tree that we planted in 2011. Every year it gives us piles of apples which get turned into pies, apple crisps, baked apples, or just transferred to the fridge for eating. We usually have way more than we need and last year we even gave most of them away, so this year I decided to use that excess to make apple wine. No, not apple cider, which is generally less than 8% alcohol (like beer), but apple wine, which will be in the vicinity of 12-14%.

This year I also wanted to make it easy on myself, and so instead of crushing the fruit like I normally do (by putting them in mesh bags and squishing the juice out with my hands) I figured I'd order a wine press, which I did.

I had a plan, and it was simple: pick the apples, slice the apples, freeze the apples, thaw the apples, press the apples, make wine. Believe it it not, the wine-making stage is actually the easy part, though I didn't realize the rest would be quite so difficult.

The Failure of Capitalism

I ordered the press from Amazon and it arrived in record time just a few days later and just in time for the ripening of my apples. The only problem is that it came missing one of the most important parts, namely the long threaded rod that is part of the screwing system that enables you to apply the pressure required to squish the fruit. Seems like a pretty serious oversight.

I contacted them right away and they responded instantly and the next day I was informed that the part was in the mail. Wow, that was easy.

After a week and a half of waiting for the part to arrive and after repeated assurances from the supplier that it just takes time to get through customs, my impatience got the better of me and I decided to take matters into my own hands. I went uptown in search of a threaded rod locally. I took the piece that is supposed to screw onto said rod (called a ‘trunnion') which is essentially just a big nut that you can attach a stick to for leverage to turn it. I found a rod that I thought was going to fit - it was a bit tight but the guy told me that it seemed like there was maybe a bit of paint in the threads of the trunnion and so that was likely the reason. Fine. Of course I couldn't buy just two feet of it - I had to buy the whole six foot piece for about twelve bucks per foot. I just grit my teeth and paid it because the apples were falling and would be rotting on the tree soon.

When I got home with my new acquisition, can you guess what was waiting on the front porch? Yes, it was in fact that very rod, the absence of which had been the cause of so much grief and anxiety. Good thing too, because it turned out the one I bought didn't fit anyway.

Excited to finally put this thing together, I ripped open the packaging only to find that the rod they sent me didn't fit the trunnion either. And it wasn't even close. The company told me they'd send me a new rod and a new trunnion and assured me (yet again) that they would be in the mail the next day and that this time they would fit.

Frustrated, I headed back to the store to return the rod I had just purchased and to hopefully buy a regular nut that would fit on the new rod so I could make my own damn trunnion. Turns out NO ONE in this town has anything with that kind of thread, but of course they were well able to order me a nut that would fit. And what's more, they could have it here by Tuesday afternoon for the low, low price of right around $100. For a nut. I told him I'd take it under advisement...

So, back home I go, determined to emerge victorious on the other side. I remembered I had a set of thread-cutters (for wood) in the shed. It had been my grandpa's and I’d never really had an actual purpose for it but now, possibly, I did. There were three sizes and the big one looked as though it would fit and the thread looked pretty close. I also found a big chunk of teak in the shed so I set about making a nut. Teak is super hard and quite oily so I figured it would be a great choice for a nut like this since there would be a lot of pressure required to squish these apples. I made the nut and it went on pretty nice but then began to bind a little once it was on all the way. So, the thread didn't quite mesh but it was close and with wood there's always a little bit of forgiveness. I figured it would likely work.

After a little bit of searching, I came across a piece of cherrywood from my cabinet building days. It already had some cool grooves in it so that was fun. I quickly fashioned a makeshift handle out of it and glued and screwed it to the teak nut I had made. I now had a trunnion.

The new wooden trunnion. Yes, it worked.

I filled up the press with apples and spun my home-made trunnion on and it worked! I had no idea how much pressure the threads would handle so I was pretty gentle with it at first. It wasn't until I had dumped the last bit of apples in the press that I decided to crank that thing down as far as it would go. I was flabbergasted at the amount of pressure I was able to apply with that wooden nut. When it finally broke, it was the screws and the glue joint that gave out, not the threads. I had just assumed the threads would be the weakest link. Evidently teak is a great wood to use for something like this.

Anyway, long story short: after some trial and error, I came up with my own (albeit temporary) solution to capitalism’s disappointing inadequacy, and after battling the wasp hordes from hell for a few hours, I ended up with about four gallons of juice from a wheelbarrow full of apples that I had scooped up off the ground. Might've gotten a bit more had I not had to make do with a wooden trunnion, but I was satisfied with the outcome nonetheless. Anyway, as of this writing I still haven't received the proper parts.

The next day I let my yeast loose on that sugary world, and the rest is up to them.

So, though capitalism may have failed me in this endeavor, what ultimately carried the day was my hyperfocus, resourcefulness, and stick-toitiveness - also known as: ADHD and OCD.

Regardless of how one chooses to define these things, at the end of the day it felt good to have accomplished what I had set out to do, even in the face of relentless opposition. And no, the government didn't come to my rescue, nor did my neighbors (although they probably would have had I asked).

So, it was a successful harvest here in the literal sense and as for that metaphorical sense I alluded to earlier, well, there's one coming for that too…