Soup for summer: fruit soup

I was inspired 1) by the flavor of mrissa's berry soup that she served for brunch when Andrew and I visited at Thanksgiving time and 2) by the overwhelming sweetness of many of the wines served at the local Mackinaw Valley Vineyard when I visited the winery for a friend's birthday party in May.

I can't recommend any of the Mackinaw wines I tried for drinking because they only came in two varieties: cloyingly sweet and nose-wrinkling sour.

Once I stopped sipping around the Mackinaw wine list for a wine to serve alone or with dinner and started looking for a wine to make fruit soup, I began to find the sweet red wines a lot more interesting. I halted the search with Eric's Red, which had just the right sweet fruitiness with a hint of spice to go with the cherries I'd been saving. Seemed appropriate to use a wine with a Viking ship on the label for a Scandinavian-inspired cold soup.

I recommend serving this dish for brunch or dessert and not serving it to the kids because of the noticeable amounts of alcohol in it. The garnish in the photo is dried strawberry slices I made a few days before.

Eric's Red Tart Cherry Soup
serves 6 to 8

1.5 pounds frozen red tart cherries
3/4 to 1 c sugar (I used vegan demerara sugar)
2 cups water
juice of 1/2 lemon
1 tsp ground ginger
1/2 to 1 tsp ground nutmeg
1 Tbsp quick-cooking tapioca (such as Minit)
2 cups Mackinaw Valley Vineyards Eric's Red or other very sweet red wine

Combine all ingredients except wine in a pot, let sit five minutes, then bring to a boil. Cook until sugar dissolves completely. Remove from heat, add wine and puree. If puree is very thick, add more wine. Serve chilled.