The Grapes

There's two and a half tonnes of fresh Italian grapes there. (Behind to too willing volunteers!!)

Richard, the organiser.

Richard from 'Cheers' homebrew shop in Sutton arranges this little event every year, what a great chap.

Crushing

The red grapes are crushed, a bit like the grain in the beer making.

Crushing2

No motorised mills here I'm afraid, it's all hand powered!

Crushing3

Some of the empties.

Into the fermenter

The crushed red grapes go straight into a fermeter, bits of leave and all. The natural yeast on the skins will start the fermenting very quickly.

Crushing the White grapes

Like the red grapes the white grapes are crushed too. This is actually an apple crusher which didn't work with grapes!

Pressing

The white wine isn't fermented on the grape skins so it gets pressed to get as much juice out as possible.

Pressing2

It's all done by hand too!!

Grape Skins

After the juice has been pressed out they apparently make good compost.

Fermenting

Here's the first run of red wine in its secondary fermenter. Another 4 gallons of water and a load of sugar is added back into the fermenter on top of the grape skins to make a second run of lighter wine.