Out of the Barrel

Our wine had been sitting in a barrel for about six months -- since last September. The time had come to do something about it...

A good sunny day in March is supposed to be ideal for bottling. The wine needs to be out of the barrel before the weather warms up too much. So last week we picked a nice day -- Monday -- and set to work. I managed to fill about 60 wine bottles that we'd collected -- and corked them with this rather wonderful machine:

With tons of wine left in the barrel, I took up the neighbour's offer and began cleaning garrafao (5-litre demijohns) from a huge stack he keeps outside. It was quite a lot of work. In the end, we filled 40 of those as well as a few 5-litre plastic water bottles.

The remaining small amount we left in the barrel for a few days and then put it aside in a plastic tub to become vinegar. Unfortunately, there was a little more left than I thought. So we are going to end up with around 20 litres of vinegar in addition to around 300 litres of wine. Quite enough to last us until next November, when the new wine will be ready for tasting...