lostpaddle

I really wanted to have a hand in wine making, both because it seems like a good thing to know, and everyone here works like the ants in the parable with that lazy ‘ol grasshopper, and could use an extra hand whenever one is available. Unless I’m getting it mixed up, like if the ants are the lazy ones. Anyway, I offered several farmers my unskilled grape labor, and finally got a chance to show just how much I don’t know.

My host mom has grapes, I didn’t think she had enough to press, or she is busy with other things, like yelling. So I was pleasantly surprised when she might have said something about making wine, or maybe she said something about soup, either one. She borrowed a big oak barrel from our neighbor and handed me a bucket. She has about 30 yards worth of grapevine, stretched end to end, I have been eating one or two since I got here, to see how they were coming, and in the last week, they really got good.

There is not much to it. I would fill a bucket with bunches of grapes, (including the stems but no leaves) dump it into a hopper on top of the barrel. The hopper had a handle that turned two cylinders together like a wringer. Secretly, I rescued several spiders from this terrible fate, terrible for both of us, as I don’t want to drink spider guts, and I doubt they want me to drink them, either. It was a flawed system though, because I only helped those spiders I saw, which leads me to believe there may have been one or two who slipped past my vigilance. But lets not speak of this again. Jana assisted with quality control and keeping an eye peeled for the rooster. He was no help at all.

In an hour or so, we had the barrel about ¾ full, and no more grapes to feed that insatiable hopper. To recap: grapes go in to the pulp-erator. And that’s it. Maria covered the barrel with a piece of oilcloth and I waited eagerly for the fermentation process to start, and like most vigils, I totally missed it.

On day two, the crushed stems were almost to the top, I presume swollen from the juice? Anyway, Maria stirred with a stick, and the juice was definitely foamy. She though it was going to rain that night, and we didn’t have a good lid, so we brought her big aluminum wine cask from her cellar and washed it out well. (and by washed out well, I mean the opposite of that, not washed out well.) Then we put it back in the cellar and started filling it with buckets of juice from the bunghole (that really is the correct term, totally not making that up).

We got 120 liters, give or take 10, out of her yard. I was really surprised, it didn’t look like that many grapes. Also, Maria hadn’t made wine since her husband died ten years ago, so I was happy to help her with it, and she seemed genuinely happy to show me something new, and to use her otherwise bird food grapes. It really is hard to tell if she is happy ever, though. She’s a bit of a sourpuss, but she has had a hard life, and works incredibly hard for survival.

The pulpy residue is used to make raku, that nasty alcohol I keep going on about. I will keep you posted on how it is made, I suspect there is fingernail polish remover involved in the process, somehow, and a human soul. In a month, we will have some delicious spider juice, fingers crossed. A cultural note, I have been around a couple of farmers who drink vodka to sterilize the otherwise dirty food they eat, or maybe they like to drink vodka in the morning and that’s a good excuse. Either way. And technically it was the same farmer, twice.

Whatever also they discuss when sober, is always a second time examined after they have been drinking.
Herodotus (485 – 425 BC)