Growing up in the fishing village of La Fillette on Trinidad's north coast, Lyndi Jordan remembers standing in the kitchen, looking on as her mother Cheryl Jordan set fruits to ferment to make wine.
The recipe for the wines that filled Jordan’s memories was passed on from generation to generation, until she was able to learn the family secret to making great-tasting local wine.
Now that Jordan learned the secret, she has taken four generations of local wine making and turned it into a business which delivers a product that is not only reminiscent of the delicious home-made wines that are a part of several Christmas traditions, but is also of international quality.
Four generations of wine makers
Aquarian Legacy Winery was registered as a business in October 2020, but its story spans four generations, according to Jordan.
The tradition started with her great grandmother, Mary Octavia Kernahan, a farmer and midwife. It was then passed down to her grandmother Hilda Brown, also a farmer and midwife, then to her mother and finally to her. She said the recipe is traditionally passed down to the women in her family.
[caption id="attachment_932065" align="alignnone" width="1024"] Amphitrite celebrates the legacy of the women wine-makers in Lyndi Jordan's family. - PHOTO BY ROGER JACOB[/caption]
She said wine making has been at the centre of many of her family traditions.
“I enjoyed being part of making the wines with my mom,” she said.
“I would be there helping out, tasting and so on. Sometimes I would even sneak into her cupboard and steal a little wine from her stash. Years later, I learned that she did the same with her mom’s stash. So I guess I carried on that tradition as well.”
Jordan knows a thing or two about how bacteria works – she is a marine biologist with a background in microbiology. But even with the scientific know-how and the recipe, she still depends on that generational knowledge to produce the wines she puts on the market.
“People assume I drink wine all the time because I make it, but I normally drink when I am taste-testing. My sister Lynissa, my mom and I would take out a batch and some shot glasses and we would run through a few flavours. She would say ‘this one is too sweet’ or ‘this one has a little too much vinegar in it’ or ‘this one is perfect.’
"It’s a lot of fun and we get a little tipsy from doing it, but it is important to the process because it is a tradition in our family.”
Jordan said her mother has the entire recipe in her head, from the best way to set the fruits, to straining the wine, to the length of time it should ferment. She simply pulls out the method and standardises the procedure.
But wines are not Jordan's only business. She also established Aurora Bitayson Ltd, which produces coconut oil, wines, syrups and jellies from an estate which was started by her father’s grandparents in the 1950s. This year, she also established Mommel's concentrate juices.
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