Concord grape granita

Quickly: when I say the word "wine," what do you think of? California, Virginia, or New York? Spain, Chile, or Australia? Chateaux or vineyards? Silver trays of champagne circling through a wedding reception? Winos swilling rotgut? Seventies swingers dipping bread cubes into fondue while pronouncing the Mateus "amusing?" Drunken college kids doing box-wine funnels? Or do you think of dessert?

All summer, my yearly seizure of frozen dessert making has been in full swing. You know the drill: as a season dawns, you feel besieged by the love of seasonal ingredients and compelled to express the love in your kitchen. In fall it's pumpkins and in spring it's the first vegetables (vegetable marrows, if you're a Christie fan). And, for me, in summer, it's ice cream. And sorbet. And lemon ices. And milkshakes (cabinets, if you're a Rhode Islander).

And ice cream sandwiches with a bit of that brown wafer still adhered to sticky wrapping paper. And digging through the arctic wonderland of the ice cream case to get to the shy banana popsicle that always hides among the more sociable grape and orange. And the homemade version you found in the freezer in ice cube trays with toothpicks standing at attention. And dashing into a convenience store off the interstate for a cherry slush. And walking through the county fair, trying to eat your snow cone before it melts and a sluice of sugary water runs out of the hole in the bottom of the conical paper cup and down your arm, screaming "buffet" to the mosquitoes who were killing time waiting for you to come along.

And that, kids, is why we call sugary water – whether it's your melted snow cone or the Dixie cups of fruit punch or orange drink that someone's aunt handed out at the Memorial Day picnic or, later in the summer, vacation bible school -- "bug juice." So far, this summer's frozen favorites are green apple sorbet and banana nut ice cream. (Past summertime hall-of-famers include peach and cinnamon ice creams, cantaloupe sorbet, and lime ice).

But while writing independently about California cuisine I got to thinking about wine grapes. That led to a vague memory of seeing a recipe for "grape foam" in an Italian cookbook. Since I was working the ice cream maker night and day, I decided to unearth "grape foam" and give it a try. Here's where you can locate that recipe, courtesy of no less an authority than Mario Batali. It's quite nice, but my thinking went in a different direction.

My favorite Italian sweet is granita, and I was thinking about wine. So into the kitchen I went. The first experiment failed: though it seemed to me that chianti, the world's greatest cheap drunk, would be formulated for every possibility, it turns out that pure red wine doesn't really freeze accommodatingly. I wanted a granita with that distinctive crystalline structure; I have since learned that the alcohol in wine and liquor prevent this, which is why alcoholic granitas are first cooked before going into the freezer.

However, as any cook who's cooked down a sauce knows, sometimes you have to get through the first incarnation of an idea in order to arrive at its true essence. Wine comes from grapes, grapes led to grape juice, and – eureka! – grape juice freezes beautifully. Yes: childhood concord grape juice, redolent of the deep purple of the grapes themselves; perhaps in your memory the very bug juice mentioned above.

A pure concord grape granita distills the essence of flavor: the ice shocks the mouth in order to set up the payoff of an intense burst of deep, dark sweetness. And, spiked with a few tablespoons of a complimentary red wine – chianti (I knew I'd get it in there somehow), or rioja if you're willing to cross borders – the icy, sweet burst takes on a voluptuous, sophisticated dimension, not unlike the distinction between Sophia Loren the starlet and Loren the movie star. So set aside some time to make – and savor -- a concord grape granita. August takes us into summer's deepest territory, and as those last lazy days march inexorably towards the quickening pace of September, it's the perfect realization of summer's pleasures – and anticipation of the upcoming harvest.