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This Village Wine In Spain Is Made Simply From Grape Juice...... Plus Lots Of Love And FriendshipWe'd been in Spain a couple of weeks and were invited to see how village wine from Spain was made. Not knowing much Spanish at the time I assumed we had been invited for a demonstration organised by the Town Hall (ayuntamiento) in the village centre. Juan is a lovely man, you can see him on the left in the photograph above. Very friendly and tolerant of our spanish language skills - which at that time were practically non-existent. Preparing The GrapesWe soon found out that it is the custom here that our neighbours help each other at grape harvesting time - with neighbours going to each of the other neighbours' vineyards to help to gather in the grapes for the making of village wine Spain. Everyone's grapes are kept separate, we each simply help each other. Today was Juan's turn to have his grapes harvested. Everyone was in a cheerful mood with lots of friendly banter from one to the other, cutting the grapes, putting them into empty crates and then the crates of grapes being transported to the wine making equipment. Side Note Juan - I now call him Don Rioja de Padul - owns the necessary wine making equipment. He has it at his cortijo - subsequently the neighbours take their grapes down to his cortijo for pressing, and then the pressed grape juice is taken back to each person's house where it ferments and is made into village wine in Spain. Apparently, the first thing to do before starting to press the grapes is to have a drink of last year's mosto (the local name for village wine from Spain). And so after we had all toasted each other's health and drunk our fill we started with the business at hand.  The bunches of grapes are put into a machine with a sort of corkscrew thing going down the middle (I must confess that that is not the technical explanation but I hope you know what I mean). The corkscrew pulls the grapes off the vine-bunch while depositing the shredded vines onto the floor for disposal and shooting the grapes down a yellow tube and into the wine press. Once the press is full, its lid is put on and, using a ratchet mechanism, the juice is pressed out from the grapes and collected into large plastic containers. The grapes which go into the machine, and the juice which comes out and into the plastic containers are allocated to the person who owns them. I must say that this wine making is not a co-operative in which all the grapes and juice is mixed in and then divided up afterwards. No. Everyone each receives the juice from his own grapes which then gets taken back to his own house. My Spanish HeavenAt 2.00pm (Spanish lunch time) all work stops. We then go to have lunch together at one of the neighbour's houses. And this is another of the wonderful feelings I have come to appreciate here in Spain.... sitting around a large table in the dappled shade of the walnut tree with friends.... the Spanish village wine, beer, chilled water and Fanta flowing freely..... the spanish patatas á la pobre (poor man's potatoes) or paella to eat with sun ripened salad and fruit along with freshly baked spanish bread and extra virgin olive oil.... and finally freshly made real coffee to finish off with. After the meal is finished, Louis will invariably start singing with his rich tenor voice, accompanied by Carmie - his wife - and the rest of us joining in with each chorus. This must surely be a version of Spanish Heaven which I will never take for granted but which I will always hold near to my heart.Fermenting The Grape JuiceOnce we have pressed the grape juice, it is put into large drums (bidones) with taps at the bottom. A small amount of sugar is added - no yeast - just to encourage the fermentation to start, and then only a few hours later, the grape juice is bubbling and frothing away. From then on it is just a case of making sure that the fermentation proceeds without problem. When the fermentation is finished (just a couple of weeks later) the juice is poured off from the must (dead yeast at the bottom of the bidones), the bidones are refilled with the "wine" that had been poured off and then the wine is left to "mature".Just three months later the village wine from Spain is ready to drink - Cheers! (Salud!) Our Own Vineyard We bought our own vineyard a couple of years after we arrived. It is situated along the north eastern side of our house and has an area of just 678 square metres. The variety of wine grapes in our vineyard are Montua and Perruna. They are mainly white with some red and give a rosé colour to our mosto. The first year we obtained 200 litres of village wine in Spain. The second year we got 400 litres. And it's taste is wonderful! If you decide to visit our bed and breakfast Granada accommodation you must ask to taste our village wine from Spain. Salud!To go to the top of this page click on village wine in Spain
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Babs and I joined in with the others helping to harvest the grapes. However, once Juan's grapes had all been taken round to the machines for pressing, Babs went off with the other women to Antonia's house in order to help with preparing the meal for everyone. We men then got on with the making of the village wine from Spain.