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......