This is like a “Ripley’s Believe it or Not” story.
A while ago, I received a telephone call from a guy who called himself Julian from Seven Sharp, asking me if I represented Pegasus Amateur Winemakers Society. I confessed that I did.
His next question was “can you make wine from gorse?”. I said “Yes, in fact I have some gorse flower wine I put down a couple of years ago”. He said that he would like to come and film a short story about it for Seven Sharp. The meeting was arranged.
Julian arrived at the appointed place and we had a convivial encounter with him that eventually aired on National TV.
I hunted out the two bottles I had from the back of my storage area, and to my surprise they had cleared, and even tasted tolerably better than I remembered from the last time I had tried them. A quick label print with a pretty picture of a gorse flower and the name “Pegasus Amateur Winemakers Society” was all that was needed to make a presentable bottle of Gorse Flower wine.Well, that “clip” ended up on a Stuff website. You can still view it on the following link: http://www.tvnz.co.nz/o…-next-cash-crop
Out of the blue (or ether) I received an email from a lady living on Pender Island in British Columbia, Canada, asking if she could have the recipe because apparently there is a lot of gorse growing on one of the two islands.
Sending her a copy of THE recipe was no problem, but then she requested a copy of the book it came from. That proved a slightly more difficult task. You see, it came from a book entitled “Home Winemakers Recipes” by DT McKechie. This was last printed in 1979, and copyrighted to the Estate of DT McKechie – the man himself having died in 1978, I believe.
I understood that the Dunedin Winemakers and Brewers Club had something to do with the book, so I made contact with them. It transpired that they still had a few copies left, so thanks to the Dunedin members, I got hold of one and sent it off to Canada.
The lady on Pender Island has received the book and has forwarded her warmest thanks to us for the efforts to which we all went to help another potential winemaker. Long live the fraternity created by a common interest.