John Moore didn’t write many books, but in William Hart of “Crackbrained” Brensham he created a character for the ages.

William dominates—is—The Blue Field, Moore’s love letter to English village life of the mid-20th century. He is an old reprobate, no question, but among the most endearing in literature. In youth he was a roisterer, a “bruiser,” given to wild brawls and cries of “Thee carns’t touch I—I be a descendant of the poet Shakespeare!”

In old age, William was relegated to tallying the sprout crop as Brensham village turned out to get the harvest in. He could identify the farm girls from a quarter-mile off: “I knows ’em by their little backsides, you see.”

William was also a superb wainwright, gardener, and (when finally too crippled to go down to the Horse and Harrow) a maker of wine from any kind of fruit or vegetable he could grow—which was about anything.

Several years ago, sensing that the day might come when I couldn’t get to the pub either, I decided to follow William’s example and start my own wine cellar. The pear tree at the bottom of the yard had outdone itself that year, so I began.

Please understand, any oenophiles out there, that I’ve never intended to be good at this. Home winemaking exemplifies for me the maxim that “not everything worth doing is worth doing well.” I got some plastic waste buckets, muslin, and brewer’s yeast, and was in business. An old book on winemaking by H.E. Bravery (just the name for this enterprise) was my guide.

I threw the chopped-up pears in the waste buckets, added water, sugar, and yeast, put muslin over the top, and went away for 14 days. The first batch was a little strong—“paint thinner,” Karen says—but by winter I had some still-potent but pretty good pear wine. (I did take steps against contamination, having as a child made five gallons of elderberry vinegar by accident.)

In the years since, I’ve made pear/cosmos blossom wine, peach brandy, wheat wine, carrot “whisky,” persimmon wine, and one or two other things that took care of a garden surplus. A gallon of blueberry wine is ripening nicely at the moment. It’s an astonishing bluish-red, but probably a little too sweet. It doesn’t matter. You shouldn’t drink very much of any fruit wine, if you want to totter to bed in a reasonably straight line.

This summer an attack of fire blight diminished the pear crop, but the garden has thrived as never before. I can almost hear William Hart’s priapic genius laughing over it. And I have a turnip surplus.

[To be continued]