CHAMPAGNE GRAPES

For years we’ve had a few different varieties of grape vines growing in the back yard. It seems that every year they put all of their energy into rambling all over the place, climbing over the fence, flopping into the paths, and invading the garden spaces. We ended up removing two vines that got too big for the area where they were growing, but have left two others that were planted in a more forgiving space. As I recall, one was a Concord grape and the other a Champagne grape, although I could be wrong. The Concord has languished, never producing so much as a single grape, and not much in the way of a vine. The Champagne grape, on the other hand, goes berserk with vegetative growth every year, producing a few stray grapes along the way, most of which have always been consumed by the quail before we could even taste them.

This year I decided to adopt a kill-or-cure strategy. After the vine bloomed this spring, I kept cutting the canes back to the point where bunches of baby grapes were growing. Maybe not regularly, but enough so that some of the plant’s energy actually went into the fruit instead of over-the-top vines. A few weeks ago I went out and harvested the first four bunches of grapes, and what a treat they were! We ate them, picked right off the vine, still chilled by the cold, wet, outdoor air.

The small grapes are a beautiful, translucent, frosted lavender-pink, with no hint of the sliminess that many home-grown grapes have. They’re just sweet enough, but not too sweet, with subtle flowery and fruity flavors. Although they’re not extremely sweet, they have no hint of sourness, which makes for really good eating. As far as I could tell, they are seedless. In the subsequent weeks we’ve harvested quite a few more bunches, just as good as the first ones. There are still a few stragglers left on the vine, so we’ll be having at least a taste of grapes through the middle of November.

I can imagine that these grapes could be used to make champagne. It would be a light, dry variety. Their fragrance, picked up by the nose while eating them, isn’t the heavy, methyl anthranilate smell of concord grapes or grape artificial flavor. There’s a slight hint of that, just enough to identify them as grapes, but most of the fragrance is a juicy, sweet-astringent, complex accord of flowers and unidentified fruit notes. If they were a perfume, it would be a light, one with a paradoxical wet-dry feel.

Now out to pick the last of the grapes!

THE LIST FOR MONDAY: FIVE WAYS FRAGRANCE CAN IMPROVE YOUR HEALTH

A few days ago I was reading an article in the popular news media about “14 ways your beauty products are damaging your health”. The same old culprits were trotted forth, with little or no evidence that any of them actually were damaging anyone’s health. Every point had a disclaimer saying that the substance in question may or may not damage anyone’s health, because there are no conclusive scientific data. One of the strongest statements had to do with fragrance, which the article suggested would make anyone sick who came in contact with it, and should be avoided at all costs. 

I’m really tired of reading “the sky is falling” lists, so I thought I’d put together a list of positives regarding the potential healthy effects of fragrance.

1. Many fragrant materials are anti-bacterial, antifungal, and/or anti-viral. This has been known for ages, but is generally dismissed nowadays as too low-tech to take seriously. What really strikes me is that ever since I’ve been making perfumes, I haven’t had a single cold, flu, or other respiratory illness despite being constantly surrounded by coughing, sneezing, feverish, sniffling students and colleagues. Can it be that breathing perfume protects against colds and flu? That was the rationale behind pomander balls and other scented amulets that were worn back in the days before scientific microbiology. People probably observed that breathing vapors of resins and spices tended to reduce the incidence of airborne sickness. Spices have always been used, not just to make food taste good, but as preservatives that prevent growth of bacteria responsible for spoilage, probably because people observed that highly spiced foods kept better than bland foods, especially in warm climates. Sometimes anecdotal evidence is correct and people instinctively do what’s good for them. 

2. Pleasant fragrance can improve mood, and a positive mood improves overall health. This is probably the most obvious health benefit of perfume. Some scents just make us feel happy, contented, relaxed, comfortable, enthusiastic, capable, powerful, or exhilarated. The specific scents that do this are different for each person, so it’s worth experimenting to find what fragrances produce positive mood effects. The experimentation itself should be a fun process that improves mood.

3. Pleasant fragrance can counteract negative situations. My most memorable use of fragrance in this context was when I was staying in an airport hotel because I had a ridiculously early flight the next morning. The room smelled so moldy and disgusting that I wouldn’t have been able to sleep unless I’d happened to go out on the street, see some lavender growing in a flower box, and pick a big batch of it to take back to the room. I put it as close to my nose as possible when I went to bed, and managed to sleep soundly until the alarm went off in the dark of the late night/early morning. If fragrance helps you sleep, that’s good, because too little sleep is bad for your health. Being in a stressful situation of any kind is bad, and obnoxious odors are definitely a source of stress. Even if they can’t be eliminated, masking them with something you like seems to help.

4. Fragrance can enhance interpersonal interactions. This is what all the advertising says or implies, and it’s true. The human touch is healing. Anything that involves being close to others in a good way boosts health, so using fragrance to attract others to come close or to enhance close encounters is a good thing.

5. Fragrance is a wonderful placebo. Even if its not physically doing anything obvious, if you think it’s helping you, it is. If you think it’s making you attractive, you probably feel attractive, and that makes you attractive. If the people in medieval Europe thought fragrance was mystically helping prevent the plague, it probably was, or maybe it was just repelling the fleas that carried it. If you wear a fragrance that you think makes you confident, you will be confident. Now I need to find THE fragrance that makes me think I can write a blog post every day come rain or shine. That would be the best placebo ever!

[photos adapted from Wikimedia, painting by Guillaume Seignac ca 1900]

DAY OF THE DEAD

This is the traditional Day of the Dead, and I have to reflect on how appropriate that is given the number of people who were killed as a result of Sandy’s progress from the Caribbean up through Canada. The first order of business is to remember them and all of the living people who were affected by the storm. Things will get back to “normal” sooner or later, but for some it may take a long time.  For some it will probably change their lives in ways that they could not have imagined a week ago.

We in the Pacific Northwest are lucky to have just had some mild rain this week, as the leaves finally start their descent into fall. As I look out my window, the big leaf maples, hazelnuts, and cottonwoods have mostly turned a bright gold, creating a sunny-hued curtain over the grey of the sky. It’s definitely the time of death – for the leaves, for the tops of the deciduous orchids that will spend the winter as bulbs underground, proliferating and gaining strength for their emergence a few months from now, for the bracken ferns that grow by the path to the woods. From the other window, the grape and blueberry leaves are turning yellow and red, but the rains have stimulated the marigolds to bloom again and the brown turkey fig tree to produce a bumper crop of huge, sweet, juicy, ripe fruit – the second crop this year! Way to go, fig tree!

The rain has also stimulated the cyclamens to bloom early this year, so the ground under the fig tree is a mass of pink flowers. There’s death in some corners, and new life in others. The eternal cycle. 

[Photos from Wikimedia]