Wine Season

Today at lunch I drank 4 glasses of week old wine with my host family!

This is exciting for a few reasons:
1) My host family rarely rarely drinks (as in this is the first time)
2) The grapes were literally picked the week before last.
3) In the interim weeks the courtyard has smelled either of grapes or wine all day, every day!

Unfortunately I was not allowed to help. Maria, my mama gazda, explained that because I am a teacher, I must be mai frumos--more beautiful--and not stain up my hands with the several tons of grapes that were being processed a bit at a time everyday for two weeks.

Thats ok, I just kinda stalked Maria in the meantime, watching her do everything and asking absurd questions like "wow, NOW what are you doing?" or "wow! the grapes are boiling themselves!" So, most of the time it wasn't questions, just out loud and grammatically incorrect (I have the language level of a 5 year old) fascination with the whole process.

First we picked grapes for 10 hours straight, 2 days in a row. The bags lined the corner of the house under my window. It smelled sweeet every day and night as they waited for step two to finish.

Then we cleaned or made barrels. Think the size of an original VW Bug. And wooden, like what pirates keep rum in.

Then put a grinder on top of each barrel and dump grapes, vine and all into it, grind. Repeat until full. Cover. Leave for a week. there were 4 such barrels in the yard!

These barrells of squished grapes bubbled and fumed and fermented and smelled awesome...

Matt and Becca stayed the weekend here last weekend while this fermentation part was happening. I think they were sufficiently jealous/impressed with my sweet provincial life.

NEXT! scoop up a couple gallons of this mess into a small barrell with a crank on top and big bowl underneath. The crank squishes the grapes so all the wine presses out into the bowl when the bowl is full or the gallons are depleted empty bowl into the keeper vats which are far more modern and equipped with shininess and spigots.

These shiny ones are kept in the bechiul (pronounced bitch)and can be easily accessed whenever we need wine for lunch or dinner! woot!

Today's preliminary samplings were tasty tasty. Very sweet and faintly carbonated, really, the white was more like champagne! oh, so good. Especially with fresh sheep cheese -- so salty! very like Halloumi if you know this greek awesomeness!