The science bit...

Of course there was much hysteria at my attempts to actually have a look at the chemistry going on, not least of all when I tried to bring both acid crystals and sodium hydroxide solution through Manchester airport security - this is another story, for another day... suffice to say that they ignored the sodium hydroxide, and had a real go with the acid, claiming it was a too high in volume solution - until I rattled it and suggested it was solid. Fortunately they were an amiable lot and joined in with the whole Les Anglais making wine in France Joie de Vivre.


So morning came and a small chemistry lab was set up in the kitchen. Do you remember titrations? Mmmm thanks to google and the dredging of our memories, the test tube was filled, the indicator added... nothing changed, no end point... so to cut a long story short, and some more google research later we discovered that the grape juice was too acidic, at 0.95% when ideal is 0.6%. What!?! All my plans had been laid to bring the acidity up from too low. Quickly looking up what to do with too much acidity, we rapidly came to the conclusion that it was in the "too hard" box for this year, and that we might be able to do a bit of correction later.

The most important measurement for us "Noddy" winemakers is specific gravity - this tells us all about sugar content, and eventual alcohol content and is a relatively easy measurement to take. It goes something like this...measure the specific gravity of the juice, look up on the table the amount of sugar needed (which when converted to alcohol by the yeast (being put in later tonight)) to get to the percentage of alcohol you want.

So in our case - juice was specific gravity 1.080, therefore 200g/litre sugar. The table said for 12.7% alcohol you need 220g/litre of sugar, and as we had 50 litres, we needed to add......yes 1kg of sugar, just a bag!

I ruined the first bag by dissolving it in water and realising I didn't want to add all that extra water, so then I got a jug of grape juice and dissolved it in that. Then in it went.

Next the wine making party begins when we add the yeast!!!

Later that night....

Crushing has to be done as soon after the picking as possible, especially if it is a hot day, so our day was not over yet. We had found a grape crusher in the barn when we bought Grusson (together with two beautiful huge, and two smaller barrels, sadly no longer usable for wine) which Steve and Dave Brown had refurbished, cleaned and oiled with food grade oil!

So - in goes the first bucket of grapes, I get to turn the handle since I am the Vigneronne, and yes I turn it the wrong way and the grapes go flying out of it all over the winery!

Take 2 - and the crusher starts crushing woo hoo! Sadly the barrel we bought to be the primary fermentation vessel - has a top opening which is slightly smaller and the wrong shape to collect the grapes skins and juice so it is all hands to the pumps with buckets, trays whatever anyone could get their hands on, underneath the crusher trying to catch everything. The rectangular tray I bought would have been perfect, but it is full of the de-stemmed grapes....don't you just love learning curves!!!!

Soon, all the grapes are crushed and in the primary fermentation barrel, an estimated 50 - 60 litres of "must" (as that is what it is called now!)

But we couldn't resist a taste of the wine juice!

So, apart from the adding of some sodium metabisulphite (campden tablets) to kill off the wild yeast (more which later) and the cleaning up of the winery, only notionally as it is very dark by now! that is it, first day done.

Next - the science bit......

The Wine Making begins - Friday 28th September 2012

So the time has come, we've been at Grusson for 4 years and this is our first attempt! Woo hoo! I had volunteered to try and get a method and process together (foolish, foolish girl) so I was the "Vigneronne de Grusson" (all learning from a great book by Cox, and the internet (God bless the internet)). We all had team t-shirts.

Buying the equipment - perhaps I won't go there - suffice to say I dispatched Steve and Karen into the vineyard and asked them to estimate the weight of grapes so I could work out what equipment to buy - their estimate? 150 lbs (more of which later).

The day dawned a lovely sunny day. Steve and Karen went off to do some errands whilst Norman, Brian and I cleaned the winery (yes well one of the outhouses anyway). According to Brian the funniest moment was when a swallow nest landed on my head and tipped its contents down my t-shirt!

We started picking at about 11am, three people picking, two de-stemming in the winery (do we really need to de-stem Amanda??)  Oh yes, very quickly became obvious that the critical path was the de-stemming, and that I had only just got enough of the right equipment and containers to cope!

In the end it was Brian who did most of the picking whilst the rest of us variously Skyped (yes we do do UK equalta work whilst in France!), de-stemmed, went to the airport to get Ian and cooked the dinner. The last grapes were picked by Ian at about 7pm and put into the pile with their stems (you need 10% stems apparently for the tannin). Weight of grapes? From the vineyard which is what they were estimating - 130lbs (class eh!) and the total which included all the vines around the house 163lbs.

Time for dinner but the day was not over yet - we needed to crush before the night was out!

The Mill Opening July 2011