Winemaking

Saturday was a busy day for these pentathletes - winemaking and lots of cooking.

As you would imagine, the basics were - wash and de-stalk the grapes. Then press them to squeeze out the juice. Well, in the 14th century they were stomping it (see the Holkham Bible illustration in the picture). So, with our disposable apprentice away, Muirghein volunteered to give it a go. Apparently it is quite pleasant, although rather cold. And there was a bit of messing about to get the technique right - fresh washed grapes are slippery suckers!

After all the fun was over, we added the sulphide (to sterilize) and the yeast (for fermentation). Given we were going for an open fermentation process, we only covered this with a cloth, to make sure no unanticipated ingredients made their way into the mash. Now to ferment for a week...