Recycling grape skins, pips and stems; Bits and pieces in the winery

Yesterday, (Sunday 1st November) I finally got round to cleaning up and tidying the patio outside the winery, which was a huge mess after the crushing and pressing, and wine-making etc. I took the sacks of skins, pips and stems back to the vineyard and made quite a large pile next to a larger pile of organic manure, which we'll be spreading this winter sometime.

Pile of pomace next to pile of organic manure

This pomace (skins, pips and stems) will slowly decompose over time and eventually we'll spread it among the vines, thus increasing the fertility of the soil and closing a cycle of nutrients and organic matter.

The same pile seen from closer up

Very pretty, but is it art?

I also decided to tidy up inside the winery too. Despite appearances, these photos show part of the winery after tidying up!

On the left, stainless steel tanks, against the back wall, boxes full of bottles (dirty but with labels removed), in the foreground flattened cardboard boxes, and underneath a box and a bag full of recycled corks


This looks like a junkshop! Manual destemmer-crusher (white, on the left), manual crusher (blue), pneumatic lid for tank, two more bags of recycled corks, in the background my great-grandmother's marble-topped bedside table (no kidding!), manual bottle-washer, plastic crates, wooden parts of the manual press, 3 shelves, two of them freed up to receive wine, one full of stuff such as old barrels, glasses for tastings, oddly-shaped bottles, etc.

And lastly, a photo of the organic vineyard (in Carabaña). The leaves have turned brown and have started dropping, and soon the vines will enter their dormant phase. When all the leaves have fallen, we can start pruning, as by then all the sap and nutrients will have gone into the roots and trunk, ready for use in spring. If we were to start pruning too soon we would be removing sap and nutrients and the vines would not be so healthy or vigorous.



Next week it's bottle-washing time, so as to be ready to bottle the Crianza 2008, and the new young wines from the grapes harvested in September 2009.