Wild crafted raspberry and elderberry wine

Wild Wines owner Carla David is often asked hard questions about her straw-bale Applegate Valley tasting room, the types of yeasts she uses to kick-start fermentation and how many raspberries, aronia berries and blackberries she needs to grow to make about 500 cases of wine a year.

It is no surprise that Carla rarely uses grapes in her fruit wines. But standing inside her newly minted production room with walls the color of sunflower petals, she said something shocking: She has spread dandelion seeds across her property off Little Applegate Road.

To Carla, a farmer and herbalist, dandelions are not a weedy nuisance but liquid gold. Or at least, something she can sell for $20 a bottle at stores, farmers markets and to people trekking the Applegate Valley Wine Trail.

It takes thousands of petals to make a bottle of her dandelion wine. In 2011, she produced 34 cases of wine with 13 percent alcohol, and she only has four cases left. She sold out of her 2010 linden flower wine made from what she calls honeybees' "favorite nectar."

Read the complete Eno Outings column in the Medford Mail Tribune at http://www.mailtribune.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20130227/LIFE/302270314/-1/LIFE0702

For more information: Call Carla David at 541-899-1565 or visit www.enjoywildwines.com