The Perils of Strawberry Wine

She refused to sell me strawberries.

She was a middle-aged Russian-speaking woman who ran her own stall, with occasional teenaged help on summer weekends. She only knew a few English words, “Thank you” and “Super,” but she used them to good effect. She was clearly Russian-speaking but spoke at least some Estonian and taught me the names of the fruit that I pointed at. I first started buying from her indoor stall in the winter: a long counter covered with onions and cabbages and, a delight in the depth of December, Spanish oranges and a good selection of greenhouse herbs. Once the snow melted, she moved outside to a small wooden structure offering only a few seasonal fruit at any given time. They were always good quality and a fair price. I trusted her.

I’m not sure why I became obsessed with making strawberry wine. I managed to get some cheap 5-gallon/20-liter carboys which I hid underneath Cliff’s work table in the spare room. He remained oblivious while I hatched my plan to fill them all over the summer.

I started by visiting the Strawberry Lady to buy two kilos of strawberries, with a plan to slice them and cover them in sugar. Once they were macerating, I’d buy another two kilos and prep them. Over the course of a week, I reckoned, I could have six kilos of fruit soaking in its own sweet juices, ready for me to add yeast and, for reasons that I didn’t quite follow, a cup of tea.

I spent a lot of time reading home-brew recipes, specifically those that don’t require a degree in chemistry, most of which were from England. And every damn one had some sort of reference to tea, most commonly “a cup of strong tea”. It seemed logical enough that most English wine makers would sip a tea while gazing at their bubbling concoction, maybe while enjoying a dry-and-tasteless digestive biscuit. So it didn’t initially surprise me to see tea referenced in the English websites documenting the process.

But no! It turns out that they are not drinking the tea but dropping it into the wine, as a sacrifice to the fermentation gods or something. But in recipes specifying grams of fruit and liters of water and counting out yeast by the grain, not a single one said how much tea.

I had no idea whether it should be a dainty little cup of the type where you stick out your pinky while drinking it or a double-sized mug of the type that I had learned I must offer English workmen on an hourly schedule if I wished for my maintenance ever to be concluded. And what type of tea? I’ve been around the English enough to know that green tea is “green tea” and black tea is “tea,” but that doesn’t narrow it down enough. In the cupboard, we had Earl Grey, English Breakfast, Ceylon and something called Yorkshire Tea. And nowhere did any of them specify how much milk and whether I should add an extra teaspoon of sugar, and does it matter in what order I added these ingredients into the mug?

Cliff sighed at my questions and told me to just use Tetleys and could I make him a cuppa while I was at it?

But this is about the strawberries. When I bought the first two kilos, the Strawberry Lady offered to put them in a small crate for me so they wouldn’t get smashed. I accepted gracefully and tried to slide the crate into my much-too-small plastic bag. I had not come prepared for the reality of two kilos of strawberry.

“Maxima,” she asked, naming a popular supermarket. Did they have bigger bags? I didn’t know. I carried the box awkwardly in both hands, worried I’d have to press the tram door button with my nose to get on. Luckily, some kind soul stepped up to open the door for me.

The next trip to the market, I brought a selection of plastic bags from a wide range of supermarkets. Sadly, none of them were from Maxima and none of them were big enough for the box, so again I had to carry it in both hands, balancing the crate on my lap on the tram ride home while the other passengers ogled my berries.

Another weekly chore was to return the empty plastic bottles for 10 cents per bottle. Plastic bottles are bulky, especially in bulk, so I crocheted a lightweight stretchy bag to make it easier to take them to the bottle bank. As I shoved them in, I remembered the first failed bag that I’d made. It was a fetching blue and purple; however, the opening was too wide and the bag itself too shallow, leading to plastic bottles ricocheting out as I walked down the street. I’d abandoned the bag as worthless but now I realised that a large, flat crate of strawberries might just fit.

Strawberry Lady was the only vendor out front who always had a crowd of people waiting to be served. Strawberry prices varied through the week: today, they cost almost €4 a kilo but I knew, now, that the price would slowly drop in the days to come. I’d watched her scrawled price drop as low as €3.00 before bouncing up again. Big punnets of dark blueberries jostled for position at twice the price. I waited patiently until it was my turn and then silently handed my bag to the woman. She raised her eyebrows, turning it this way and that and then, as comprehension dawned, she placed an empty crate inside. It fit perfectly.

“Super,” she said, and filled the crate with strawberries. She pointed at me and then the bag, asking if I’d made it myself. I pointed at my chest and nodded. She smiled broadly. “Super,” she said again. It was the closest thing to a conversation that we’d ever had.

I took a week off and when I returned, her strawberries were at the weekly low. She reached for my crocheted bag and held out two fingers, for two kilos. I nodded, smiling. My smile slipped when she filled my bag with strawberries from a crate in the back, rather than from the front of the stall. This was a common way to sell old fruit in Spain: moldy or bruised, not good enough to be on display. I watched her carefully, suspicious, but waited until I was out of sight to check my fruit. The strawberries were as good as they always were. I felt guilty for being so petty-minded.

I returned the following morning, ready to move quickly on my next batch of wine. It was a sunny bright day. A dozen people crowded around her stall. The blueberries were gone, with bright red sliced watermelon taking their space.

She nodded in acknowledgment as I joined the line of customers. When it was my turn, I pointed at the strawberries. Normally, she would reach for my bag. When she didn’t, I clarified. “Kaks kilo, palun.” Two kilos, please, but surely, she knew that already.

She frowned. “No,” she said, clearly and in English.

Behind me, a middle-aged woman in heavy makeup jostled me as if to encourage me to hurry up. I held up the crocheted bag, hopefully.

“No,” she said again. She picked up a strawberry and handed it to me to try.

I ate it. It tasted like a strawberry.

She watched me, still frowning. I tilted my head, wanting to acknowledge that I understood that she was telling me something, but I had no idea what. She furrowed her brow.

I stuck to English. “Tomorrow?”

She shook her head, but whether she was telling me no, not tomorrow or no, she didn’t understand, I didn’t know. We were at a stalemate.

“OK,” I said. What else could I say? I turned and walked away. Had I offended her? Or was she low on strawberries and decided it was better to send me away than multiple customers wanting smaller amounts? The kindest explanation was that there was something wrong with the strawberries, but surely she wouldn’t send me away like that in front of her other customers.

I had no idea what had just happened. Worse, I probably would probably never know.

I glanced back to see her selling a large punnet of strawberries to the middle-aged woman who had been waiting behind me. She was allowed to have strawberries. So, it was personal.

I thought about finding another stall, one outside of her sight, and buying my strawberries there. But I couldn’t stand the thought of sneaking around the market, trying not to get caught spending my money.

I didn’t go back the following day or the day after that. I made a sticky syrup out of the already sliced strawberries and put away my wine-making kit. A week passed before I decided that I needed to “put on my big girl panties,” as they say in Lancashire, and go back to the market. At least I would know if Strawberry Lady was still speaking to me.

She nodded at me as I joined the queue, not effusively but not coldly, either. The strawberries were the bulk of her stand but she also had three types of cherries and nestled by her cash register were half a dozen punnets of expensive raspberries. The plastic sign stuck in the strawberries advertised the lowest price all summer.

She didn’t say anything when it was my turn, but I imagined a worried look around her eyes. The strawberries looked a bit battered, it was true, but clearly still good enough for making wine. And yet, I didn’t want to escalate the situation.

She hadn’t broken up with me, not yet, but we were clearly on rocky ground.

“I’ll have the raspberries today,” I told her. She looked at me blankly. “Raspberries,” I said again, pointing.

“Vaarikas,” she said, correcting my English into Estonian.

I nodded. “Vaarikas.”

She nodded and wrapped the punnet in plastic, pretending not to notice the crocheted bag under my arm, ready for another two kilos of strawberries.

I smiled hopefully at her and she smiled back, weakly, but enough to give me hope that we still had a future. There was plenty of fruit left to buy this summer. My wine-making days, I decided, were over.

At least I could stop worrying about the tea.