"The golden tide, the essence of this fine fair month ran, then gushed from the spout below, to be crocked, skimmed of ferment, and bottled in clean ketchup shakers, then ranked in sparkling rows in cellar gloom.
Dandelion wine.
The words were summer on the tongue. The wine was summer caught and stoppered."
~Ray Bradbury "Dandelion Wine"
As far back as I can remember, I've had a major crush on books.
As a child, I would enter the local library with the awe and reverence reserved for cathedrals. It was there that I would worship the written word; a place to receive the sacrament of ink on paper at the altar of ideas, imagination, and information.
Then, as now, books were magic carpets that transported me to worlds where anything and everything was possible. And I could be home in time for dinner.
I was eight or nine when I read Dandelion Wine by Ray Bradbury. I have read it numerous times since to relive the wonder of childhood. It's a simple book; a semi-autographical collection of stories woven together into a strange and dreamy tale of an ordinary summer, filled with extraordinary moments, in a 12-year-old boy's life. It was an introduction to subtle and complex themes that revealed themselves like layers of an onion, with two in particular that keep me coming back:
The ecstatic awareness of being alive.
And the transubstantiating magic of dandelion wine.
In the book, dandelion wine is a metaphor for life itself; a prosaic weed transformed into a mystical elixir with the power to "change the season in your veins by raising glass to lip and tilting summer in."
Having never tasted dandelion wine, I can only imagine its flavor will be sweet, slightly tart, mildly bitter. It may not turn out to be the most delicious of beverages, but I fully believe that on a cold wintry day, when I head down to the cellar and raise a glass to my lips, that the snow will melt, the sky will turn blue and–if only for a moment–it will be summer.
That is the power of flavor.
That is the magic of books.
Download recipe: Dandelion wine
Playing with Fire and Water 
I’ve never tasted it but I am very curious to try. It’s incredible that you can turn almost anything into wine. I tasted maple leaf wine this winter it was interesting.
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as a Kid my mom made it a couple times, I remmeber picking those damn Daneloins, and of course my mom being the opposite of a puritian giving us a glass, well asking and you yes at 12 because its wine, but the next time no way I didn’t like it hah. Ill have to try it now after drinking wine for a number of years now but I don’t know…..
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