It's been a while....

A few days since I was on here so a catch-up tonight with things...

The wine is fizzing nicely and there's quite a yeasty smell in the kitchen in the morning when we first go down to make our breakfast coffee.   Another few days and we will put it into the fruit press to squeeze out the juice and then continue the fermenting in plastic bottles adding sugar water gradually till it has finished.

The majority of our bottles - anything from 1.5 litres up to 25 litre ones - are stored in the corral.  This is actually our neighbours storage area but we have use of a large corner for those things that we only need to use occasionally.  We also have our grape crusher up there - it looks something like a wheelbarrow base but with holes,  rubber paddles and a handle - as you put in the grapes and turn the handle so they get squashed  and  burst and go through the holes into a bucket underneath.  The grapes continue to look good so fingers crossed and we'll get the crusher out and cleaned up for October.

There is an extra bit to the corral where Manolo used to park his car but over the last 8 years it has been neglected and the caña, wooden beams and plastic sheeted roof have mostly fallen in,  the walls have cracks with daylight showing and there is a definite lean to them.  This  weekend John and Miguel have taken down that section of the roof and very early this morning John cut up all the old beams - mostly olive wood - and we brought them down to our wood store.  A couple of hours dusty work today for at least 2 weeks fire wood.

Later in the year Miguel plans on a big tidy up and sort out of everything thing that's left - I know John doesn't like to throw things out "just in case" but having looked at all the bags and boxes in the corral that were Manolo's there is a lot of stuff to be sorted.  I hope it gets thrown out - but  not our way!