Crushing it!

With the help of friends, and child labor, we took the chilean grapes and got them ready to be made into wine. Who knew you needed so many different things & chemicals to do this. Thats whats showing in the first pic. That big bag has some expensive french oak chips. They really add depth to the wine. The next pic, if they load in this order, is all of the baskets of grapes that we crushed.  In the next photo you'll notice we 'employ' child labor. Hey, it's free and they said they had fun! The husband, Marshall, is in the next one dumping some of the Merlot grapes in and the next pic is how happy this is making him! The next pic shows what the inside of the bin in the de-stemmer/crusher looks like. What a great piece of machinery! The next pic may look like polka-dots but what you're looking at is the bottom of the de-stemmer (the white rectangular thing) at the top of the pic, which drains the de-stemmed and crushed grapes into the white tub. The stems go out the back end of course. And the final pic is of yours truly tasting a Merlot grape. They taste great on their own but have alot of seeds inside. The next blog will be the continuing saga of winemaking and drinking lots of grapejuice!