It poured in the night … well, so it sounded at least. Just 1mm according to Dan, so nothing of note or anything much to disturb the Mataro grapes still hanging out.
Plunging this morning, the Saperavi had got going on its ferment and was looking good.
The vat of Saperavi was looking lively, frothing purple with its daily plunge
The Merlot from Domaine Day was smelling delicious too – really creamy plum and toffee notes.
Dan wanted to get a few vats through pressing, so before I knew it I was back in the coffin container (they are big) bucketing the Shiraz into Nally bins so we could get press the skins, juice, pulp in the basket press. It was a nicer ferment to bucket out than the Grenache – it smelled of chocolaty black fruit and there were less whole bunches which made it easier.
No bee stings today and about 2 hours later it was done.
And this is what my feet (and hands, but I couldn’t do a picture of both!) looked like:
Shiraz feet – and my hands looked exactly the same, worse in fact, and now have a dirty black hue to them
After that I certainly deserved our lunch. I’m normally a bit cagey about sardines, having come a cropper in Portugal once, with fresh, grilled ones. This, however, was a delicious mix. The spelt wraps are really thin, rectangle – how sensible is that! – the tinned sardines have to be Portuguese and preferably spicy, with salad, a bit of harissa paste, and lots of other bits and bobs. Fab.
Ingredients for our spelt sardine wraps
It was a busy afternoon – pressing, running out of tank space, so cleaning and filling barrels to create some. I realise now there are a lot of logistics involved.
I left feeling macerated in everything to do with wine – wine, juice, skins – plus a fair amount of water spray from the cleaning, and fair-do’s tired.
Another lovely day at RedHeads.
