Wine

Down in New Orleans where everything's fine
All them people just sockin' down wine
Drinkin' wine is their delight
And when they start drinkin' start fightin' all night
Bustin' out windows and breakin' down doors
Guzzlin' down a gallon and shoutin' for more.

Now you got a nickel, I got a dime,
Let's get together and buy us some wine!
Some by a pint, some buy a quart
But if you buy a half gallon you're playin' it smart
Drinkin' wine, wine, wine, hey buddy -
Pass that bottle to me!

From "A Long Time Comin'" album of The Electric Flag, released March 1968


I've always had what you might call a complex relationship with wine. I've been drinking it since before conscious memory. My grandfather, Gavino Villapiano "the elder", as it were, made wine in the basement, and I, as his namesake out of 17 grandchildren, had the honor of being a taster, or partner in crime or just object of his amusement. "Non lascia lu bev'", my grandmother would call down from the kitchen, Don't let him drink any! "Shoo, shoo" the old man would say in broken English, then sneak me a drink. Even still, my grandmother allowed me to have wine on Sundays after church with the "gavadeel", the homemade cavatelli, as long as it was watered down with, well, water... Even my mom approved.

I got "faced" the first time when I was 12, in 1965, at my great aunt and uncle's anniversary party, I believe their 50th. My cousin, who was a year older than I, joined me. Wine didn't play a role - the multicolored cordials did the trick. He got sick as a dog. I "held my liquor", but the next morning my stomach felt like it was the size of a pea and hurt like hell. But it was clear that it was cool to get drunk, so when the social opportunity presented itself in the fall of '67, I took full advantage.

I was 14, but 5'11" and was shaving a full beard which made me look older, a lot older, than the 15 and 16 year olds I was hanging with. I was the only one who could get reliably served. [Ed Note: I was never "carded" until I was 55. Really! This year! Such is the CYA nature of our society nowadays. I'm so clearly over 18 it's a joke, like times 3...] I could go into any bar or "package goods" store and buy whatever I wanted. One time the guys I was singing with and I went to hear our idol Nicky Addeo perform at the Banjo Palace in Long Branch NJ in early October 1967. They all were stopped at the door. I milled right in. And I was the youngest by 2 full years!

Despite my obvious ability to pass, money was still an issue. Altho I could easily buy bourbon or vodka or gin, they were pricey for a 14 year old with (or without) a job. Wine, on the other hand, was cheap - you could get a pint for less than a buck, and get just as drunk as on a six pack, but for half the price.

Of course, we're not talking Chateau Neuf du Pape here. We're talking Thunderbird, Ripple, Boone's Farm. Classic rotgut. Had you seen me with a siphon in my hand you'd swear they were gasoline. There was one called Twister that was peppermint flavor and actually tasted like mouthwash. Nonetheless, this is what we could afford and it did the job. You got high. We got high. Our singing group drank so much cheap wine we were thinking about calling ourselves the Four Roses.

And of course it made you sick. You'd guzzle it (we drank on a path in a field formerly used for Ku Klux Klan rallies in the 30s, oh yeah, up north, that had tall grass, and as it got cold, you drank faster), get a buzz on for an hour or two, go to a CYO dance, spin around, get in a rumble and then go outside and puke your guts out, and I mean that literally. Many times I swore I was going to throw up my stomach right out of my body, I was puking so hard.

So it was with great interest when, right after Christmas, I overheard my older cousin (my drinking compadre, just a year older, but taking biology) mention that all wine was was grape juice that had been fermented by yeast. Hmmm...

I got thinking... How much is grape juice? Welch's Concord Grape juice in 1968 was pretty cheap, like 65 cents for a half gallon. Yeast. 15 cents a package, max. For like 80 cents you could make wine, and have twice as much! And you knew what was in it!

I did a little research. Seems like you could use a big glass bottle, stopper it up, run a tube thru the stopper and into a glass of water to allow the gasses of fermentation (CO2) to pass out of the bottle without letting air in. Sounds doable...

I must've had an allowance in those days. (I had had a paper route in 7th and 8th grade for a year as I saved up $100 to buy an electric guitar. But once I had that amount I dropped the route like a hot potato, so I hadn't earned any money for over a year by this time.) Like, $1.50 a week or something like that. Nonetheless, I scrimped up enough money and went to the local hobby store. I bought stoppers, tubing. I got my hands on an apple cider bottle. Conscientious little JD that I was, I boiled everything, even the gallon bottle, in a big corn pot. Then I bought my 80 cents worth of ingredients and put the "still" together and let nature take its course.

I had no idea what to expect, how long the fermentation process would take. I knew it was less than a year, less than six months, because my grandfather used to make wine every year (until he died in 1960). I thought, a month, maybe?

Since this was not gonna be an overnight thing, I needed some secure location for my fermenting. The cellar was the obvious candidate for fermentation, but it sure as hell wasn't secure, with the washing machine and dryer located there, as well as the cupboard, which was visited virtually every day, several times a day.

Turns out I lived in a post war ticky tacky development Cape Cod style house, and back in '61 my father had finished off the upstairs so we could expand from a 4 room house to a 6 roomer. My sister and I were the beneficiaries, with her getting the east room and me the west. Finishing off the attic meant that there would be eaves on each side of the room where the roof slanted to the top of the first floor. These places were used as storage or left empty. They were not heated, but lay under the asbestos roof and next to the new bedrooms, so they were effectively the same temp in the winter as the basement would be. And much, much more secure. NOBODY went into the eaves.

My sister was in her freshman year at college, so I had the entire upstairs all to myself. The eaves would indeed be the perfect location for my incipient winery.

Thus armed with my equipment and ingredients, and a flashlight, I went into the south eave next to my room and set up the operation. It was quite simple - dump a couple of pints of Welch's into the gallon bottle, stir in the Fleishmann's Dry Active Yeast, stopper up the bottle, run the tubing into a nearby glass of water. Then wait.

For a few days nothing seemed to be happening. I began to wonder, is this really the way wine is made? Then I feared the eaves were too cold, it being winter and all. But it didn't feel cold in there... It was a frustrating few days...

Then, nearly a week gone by, I woke up and opened the eaves opening panel to discover the water in the glass was sizzling - bubbles were coming out of the tubing into the water and escaping into the air above the glass. It was a happy Fizzies party, like in the 50s! A wonderful sight to behold.

A few days later I was in my room, dreaming... The CYO dances were on Saturday nights, and this week I was pumped with anticipation. I had dreams that the wine would be just like my grandfather's - dry, smooth, full bodied and potent, enough to get your buzz on but never to make you sick like that crap you bought in the store. I had inherited my parents' Depression-era cheapness, er, values, and was thinking about all the money I was saving.

The rate the fermentation was proceeding it looked like I had a good shot at being able to drink it soon. Once the bubbles stopped. They had gotten more steady and larger. I could just hear it in the middle of the night, comforting like a heartbeat... Wow! I can get smashed and not have to puke my guts out, and save money to boot! This was great!

My father worked two jobs - on the railroad from 5am to 1:30pm, and then at night from 5pm to 9:30. He had originally taken the second job in 1958 to make up for his blunder of getting aluminum siding on the house, which he later congratulated himself for, it being more insulating and all. He had it paid off a few years later, and by 68 he was doing it more as a pastime than out of economic need. In the interim Mom had gotten a teaching degree and become a teacher. Her income more than made up for the difference, but it also took her out many evenings, as she strove for her masters and played an active role in teacher organizations. So rather than "sit around and do nothing", the old man continued to work most nights.

Round about 11pm, I've already turned out the lights, he calls up to me. Hmm. That's weird. He NEVER calls up to me, especially this late. Especially with the lights off.

"What?" Monosyllabic speech is the preferred adolescent dialect when dealing with parents.

"Come on down here a minute, willya?"

I didn't answer but made sure I didn't hurry, either. His tone of voice wasn't angry, so I wasn't worried. My grades were passable by his standards - as long as you were not flunking out and weren't in trouble with the cops, you were okay in his book.

I ambled downstairs.

"C'mere for a minute." He didn't look up but sensed that I had descended. He was in the kitchen, looking up at the ceiling. I walked into the kitchen. As soon as I came in he stopped me and (preventatively) hushed me at the same time. "You hear that?"

We stood in the kitchen. The TV was off. The clock was electric and soundless. There was a faint electrical buzz emitted by the ca. 1952 circular neon light that ill-luminated the room. And there was also an adumbrating pulse, beating with regularity like the heart of some great beast who had devoured both of us whole, we now in its stomach.

Bloop! Bloop! Bloop!

The kitchen was located in the southwest corner of the first floor. Directly underneath the south eaves next to my room. Not only were you the closest to the fermenting bottle works aside from my bedroom, the bare plywood floor upon which the still rested that formed the ceiling of the kitchen actually amplified the sound. It was unmistakable and LOUD.

Bloop! BLOOP! BLOOP!!!

"Hear what, pop?" It was my only defense.

"That! Hear that? That sound - THAT!"

I paused pensively, for effect. I tried to look as earnest as possible, though I felt a small trickle of sweat roll down the back of my neck. I looked up, looked at him, looked up again.

"You mean that buzz? The buzz that's comin' from the light?" I pointed, as if there were more than one cheesy Fifties fixture in the room.

"No! Listen!" He paused to make sure I could hear it without mistake. "Hear it? Bloop bloop bloop bloop... " He egged me on with his hand in that circular motion that means, you know...

"I don't hear any bloop, pop..." I was really good at sincere. I had been a no trouble kid, as opposed to my sister, so it was believable. He musta thought for a second that I was losing my hearing or he was losing his mind. But then he got back to the issue.

He turned around and turned on the faucet. He let it run for a second. The blooping continued. He ran it for a few more seconds. Still there. He opened the doors of the cabinets under the sink. He listened intently. Having given up on asking me if I heard it, he answered for me. "I hear a goddamned bloop!"

He picked up the wrench that lay in a small Tupperware-knockoff tub under the sink and began tapping one of the pipes. Bloop bloop. Now the other. Bloop bloop. He slumped a little. "I'll be goddamned..."

He got up and pushed me aside, and went down into the basement. I didn't dare follow. He went over to the pipes connecting the washer, right below the kitchen. Tap tap! Bloop bloop! Tap tap tap! Bloop bloop bloop!

I was gazing blankly at the open doors under the sink, trying to come up with an explanation when he would finally go upstairs and locate the source of his irritation, when suddenly I got an idea - there, directly in front of my eyes, was a sponge. A sponge! That's it!

Clearly the blooping was coming from the glass of water releasing the big bubbles. The glass was sitting on the naked plywood floor, which was serving as a resonator. If I can place the glass on top of the sponge it might soften the bubble action and muffle the sound...

Sponges in those days were sold rigid - you had to get them wet. I quickly grabbed the turgid sponge package, bit open the cellophane cover, ripped out the hard sponge and put it under running water in the sink to hydrate it.

"What the hell is that?" He thought he was onto something, but then realized he wasn't. "Is that you??"

"Just getting a drink of water."

"Turn that damn thing off! I'm trying to solve a problem here!"

"Sorry!" The sponge was hydrated. I ran back upstairs and as carefully and soundlessly as I could, lifted the cover off the opening and crawled into the eaves. There had been no time to grab a flash light, but I could follow the bloop noise which, oddly, was less loud in the eaves than it had been in the kitchen. I carefully lifted up the glass. It blooped in my hand as I held it while I put the sponge down to receive it. This is gonna work, baby! I put the glass down on the sponge. The bubbles kept coming out thru the glass, but the blooping was almost silent. It works, baby!!

The old man continued to tap pipes alternately with attempting to tighten joints. Suddenly, after a particularly aggressive set of taps, the blooping stopped. He tapped again, just for good measure. I could hear it resonate thru the pipes in the house. He waited. A minute. I could not hear the blooping from my room. I heard him come back up to the kitchen. He was satisfied.

Sometime in the middle of the night - mighta been a half hour later for all I know, or a couple of hours - I am awakened by the sound of him coming up the stairs. He knocks on the door.

"What?"

He opens the door and turns on the light. He was in his underwear.

"You hear anything?"

This time I could be honest. "I don't hear a thing." I listened and couldn't hear a bloop. "You still hearing it?"

He stopped for a few seconds and listened. It was essentially silent. There was a tiny, almost imperceptible bloop, but you really had to strain to hear it.

"Aah, I don't know. I think I hear it but I don't know what I'm hearing any more. Maybe I'm crackin up in my old age."

I said nothing.

He kinda shook his head and snarled in resignation, turned off the light, closed the door and went downstairs.

The blooping attenuated the next day, and by Friday it had stopped altogether. I tested the product on Saturday morning, before basketball practice, and it was fizzy, but fine. I had made my first wine! It was sweet and concordy, and bubbly. Kinda like Cold Duck! Cold Duck was like champagne! Cold Duck is EXPENSIVE! I've made Cold Duck, for Christ's sake!

A side benefit, actually borne of necessity, was that I bottled the new product in the same Welch pint bottles it came in, having no other appropriate vessels. It looked just like grape juice. We could bring it anywhere, and drink it anywhere. It was grapey smelling. No cop or chaperrone would challenge us!

I got smashed that Saturday night, as did a few of my friends. We got a pretty good buzz on, and nobody got sick!

I had a bottle left over which I drank the next week before the CYO dance. I was high as a kite and danced up a storm, whirling and swirling. And again, didn't puke a lick!

By the time my second batch was ready a couple of weeks later, my cousin, who had unwittingly given me the inspiration, heard about my homemade wine and wanted some. We got drunk together, just like we had done when I was 12 and he was 13. This time neither one of us got sick.

I ramped up operations. I learned I could do a gallon safely in the same bottle, and that's what I did. I stopped sharing with friends, deeming it too risky, but was garnering a truckload of cachet all the while as my reputation spread. Kids in 4 high schools knew me and what I was up to, but no one spilled the beans, which also added to my celebrity status.

I drank and drank and drank. And for a few weeks it was great...

Then, of course, the trouble started...