A profitable business?

At the end of the summer I started to look for a buyer for the white grapes and some of the wine in the cellar. This year we decided to make wine only with the red grapes as it's a lot of work with both the white and red, and the red on it's own should deliver more than enough wine for my own use. Meanwhile, most of the barrels were already full with previous year's wine, and I didn't know what to do with them.

In the end I sold 300 litres of white from 2011 and 2012, and 250 kg of white grapes. Not for a great deal of money, and if I was to calculate how much I invested in the work to grow and harvest them, it would hardly be profitable. Still, I must say I had a proud feeling, selling my wine for real hard cash!

So this year we harvested and pressed only the red grapes, resulting in about 110-120 litres which after the first racking should nicely fill a 100l barrel.  Unfortunately the red wine from the past two years has gone slightly vinegary, one reason can be too much air in those barrels as the quantity of the wine did not fill them completely.  In future I will make sure the barrels are full, and also to mix in some sulphur at each racking to kill off harmful bacteria.

The wine which has gone off can be converted to Pálinka, so this is under consideration!

Barrel Refurbishment

A few weeks ago we took all the barrels up from the cellar, washed them down, painted the rings and put sunflower oil on the wood.  They look great now.

British wine-making in the good old days

Click on the picture for video. Nice wholesome fun.

Mushrooms in the cellar

(This was a post from 2010 which I never published at the time.)

Check this out!!!  Mushrooms growing in the cellar!

Must be all the rain this year. There is also a lot of fungus on the barrels.