Friends of the family who own a vineyard recently had such a poor harvest they couldn’t even sell it, so kindly gave us around 30kg of Riesling grapes. We spent a night (8ish till midnight) whizzing and squeezing the grapes, then pouring the juice, litre at a time, into a borrowed glass carboy.
30 kilos of Riesling grapes
The juicing and squeezing process
Filling up...
Filling up...
Full!
Some of the waste
Ten days later
The colour of the juice has lightened a lot over the last 10 days. Presumably the juicing process allowed a lot of oxidation, and the subsequent anaerobic fermentation has re-reduced it. Yay CO2, our fizzy friend.
The smell at the airlock is amazing – smells like the freshly popped cork of a nice, yeasty champagne.
