Grape Harvest Time!

Well, the time has come for our first grape harvest. The grapes are apparently good this year (who are we to tell), and everyone seems to be expecting fine wine to result.

We are planning to start the picking tomorrow (September 15th). It should only take a few hours, especially if the neighbours come and give a hand as they've promised. We don't yet know what quantity we have; it has been suggested that in a good year, with the vines well looked after, we can produce up to 800 litres of wine (which equates to around 1,000 kg of grapes). We are sure the harvest won't be that much this time, but I suppose it could be around half. Which is plenty to be going on with!

Our neighbour Orlando is allowing us to use his equipment to produce wine. We need to get the work finished before Saturday, when he'll be doing his own.

First, we'll run the grapes through a manual press (a hand-turned thing a bit like an old-fashioned laundry mangle with two large rollers) into a large concrete vat. Lifting 500 kg or more up into the hopper, then churning it through the press, should give us a good bit of physical exercise! The mass of liquid and pulp will then sit in the vat for a day or so -- longer would be better, as it is the fermenting in the vat that brings out the red colouring from the skins -- before the liquid is drained off into a wooden barrel (or more than one, depending on how much we can extract).

Our grapes are a mix of red and white. This year, for simplicity, we are simply going to mix them all together to make a red wine. Perhaps it will turn out more like rose! The wine should be ready to drink in a month or two, so come on over and try it!

Here are some of the ripe grapes, covered in bloom and ready to harvest!