You wanna some red wine, Yeah?

It has begun!

Last year we made wine by hand with Samantha's visiting parents Ada & George who sat and stood in front of 800 litre Jumbo Bins and stripped 610kg of grapes off of their stems.

Sound easy...I think not.

It's like learning to compose Trois Gymnopedes I with a Kazoo. Realistically, it takes over 30 minutes to strip one lug box filled with black and purple grapes (that really resemble ticks in the wrong light). And, you've got to fill each Jumbo Bin with a minimum of 33 lugs full of grapes. Do the math... 30min per lug times 33 plus one hour for lunch plus 30min lost to pee breaks plus another 30min lost to sending the empty lugs and stems to the empty jumbo bins outside (to be eaten by the Baboons later)...

...that equals (ok the square of the hypotenuse divided by the sum E as E=energy spent over time, divided by some silly term denoting honest hopes and desires of finishing before mid-night and that makes) = 18 hours/per Jumbo Bin...give or take bad math.

It takes for-flippen-ever to get one jumbo bin ready with grapes. The top photo, by the way, is from the early part of the day. At the end of the day I'd given up stripping for topping up the barrels and taking the Balling samples. Sam was crushed under the collective weight of Keenan, Quinn and Jessica all demanding her time "NOW!" Then she had the audacity to try and help even though there was no chance in hell of Ralph letting anyone interrupt his rhythm.

John and Jullian both quit the following day.

This work is not for the faint of heart or the timid of soul...it is the work of Giants.

And, thankfully, the wine reflects the greatness of the participants.

Next year we're going to borrow someone's grape de-stemmer. That way Sam and I can do the work by ourselves...

...and Ralph can just press the button.

Love,

J.