2016 - Volume #40, Issue #4, Page #07
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He Turns Weeds Into Wine
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“Dandelions go to seed fast, sometimes lasting less than a day,” says Lyon.
Lyon says that a bottle of dandelion wine has the equivalent of half a bottle of compacted dandelions in it. It also has local honey. In addition to dandelions, he also makes wine from other local plants including apples, rose hips, juniper berries, blueberries, herbs and more. Of them all, dandelions are likely the most difficult to secure.
“With dandelions, you have to be there at the right moment,” says Lyon. “The mass of them do their thing for about 10 days. Your field can be a week behind your neighbor’s. My foragers have to be ready to drop everything and pick.”
Lyon prefers to work with local farmers and residents around the Clintondale, N.Y., farmstead where he operates the state’s smallest legal winery. He notes that the winery could grow substantially if he could collect enough dandelions.
“I used about 100 lbs. of flower heads last year, but I could have used 10 times that many,” says Lyon.
He started making wine from wild grapes in 2000 and has been making esoteric wines ever since. “I got into mead, which is made using honey with fruit and plants that didn’t have their own sugar,” explains Lyons.
He set a goal of making top of the line wines that can go on the shelf next to the finest wines of the world. He seems to have succeeded. He and his partner Arley Marks are developing a restaurant and bar in Brooklyn, N.Y., with the bar run by Marks. Lyon hopes it will serve in part as a “tasting room” for his wines. It will also be a meadery, where he can supplement on-farm production.
His current output runs around 1,500 gal. per year, though he hopes to scale up. Doing so will require using more farmed ingredients, acknowledges Lyon, and that may include farmed dandelions.
“I do a lot of foraging of whatever is in season. However, it’s one thing to get enough for your family or yourself,” says Lyon. “If you’re in commercial production, you have to think long and hard about what is realistic to do by foraging.”
While he can’t make health claims on a label, Lyon points out that historically dandelion wine was used as a tonic against scurvy.
“Dandelions are an incredible source of vitamins and nutrients, in particular, vitamin C and iron,” he says. “Dandelion wine was a way to preserve those nutrients for medicinal purposes.”
A 2-pack of 12 1/2-oz. bottles of Memento Mori Dandelion Wine lists for $60.
Contact: FARM SHOW Followup, Enlightenment Wines, 99 Scott Ave., Brooklyn, N.Y. 11217 (ph 347 843-3159; www.enlightenmentwines.com; Raphael@enlightenmentwines.com).
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