A pressing time.

After a week of fizzing,  the pear wine got pressed this morning,  and we now have almost 30 litres.  It will be fizzing again pretty soon and we have sugar and water to add over the next week or so.  Then as it settles and clears it can be siphoned into clean bottles.

The actual pressing doesn't take too long, it's the preparation and clearing up afterwards that is time consuming.   Although the kitchen floor is tiled,  and spillages don't really matter,  sticky pear juice will only get trodden through the dining room or at worst,  I'll slip on it.  So first I put old towels down on the floor in the work area,  make sure there is a bucket of hot soapy water and a mop handy,  and a bowl of hot soapy water too, then first wash and rinse the wine press along with the bottles, funnel and assorted other stuff.  Then all that has to be sterilised as well before the fermenting pears and their juice can be poured carefully into the press.  At first the liquid comes out really fast,  we put a large pan - washed and sterilised of course - underneath,  2 pans actually,  1 to catch the juice then the other slips into place while the first is being poured into a 5 litre bottle.

So after about 3 hours work we have the beginnings of this years wine selection.  We also started some fig wine,  we had nearly 6 kilos of figs, both black and white which we've mixed as there weren't enough of either to do separately.   The figs have to be chopped up but I put them in the food processor as it is quicker.  That should give us about 5 litres,  sometimes we've just used the figs on their own and sometimes added sugar water as well but the price of sugar has gone from 47 cents  2 years ago,  to nearly 1 euro  now,  not exactly free wine anymore but still cheaper than we can buy.  Actually I'm not sure you can even buy fig wine, or pear wine,  so price isn't really an issue.  At least grapes don't need sugar adding so that really will be free wine when it comes.....fingers  crossed!