Pump Hiccups... but food and drinks!
This week was supposed to be racking the wine as usual but we ran into a few pump-related hiccups that made the process take a little bit longer. It was a good time nonetheless and the fruits (or liquids) of our labor will be well worth it.
Here's lovely shot (i.m.o) of the wine mid-rack.
As mentioned above it should have been business as usual. But last week the screw pulled through the particle board base that the pump we had been using was secured to. Our wine master suggested for one of our fellow wine-makers, who was a mechanic, to take it and fix it. It wasn't a difficult task but the mechanic was also going to add some nifty vibration dampers and coffee maker attachments... This week he didn't show up (which wasn't like him) and thus neither did our pump.
The missing pump. The only photo I could find of it, taken back in October when we were pressing.
The most important tool during this stage of the wine-making process was missing. Luckily our leader had a backup. A smaller, more hand-held style pump, that he had used in the past however. The problem, besides it being less powerful than our missing pump, was that the starter nob was damaged. It looked like it had been dropped causing the nob to become partially depressed into the housing cap. After some tinkering and elbow-grease we final got it fixed and running... running nice and slowly.
The "hand-held" backup pump
We now had the pump working and the racking set up in full gear. But if you read last week's posts on this, we were pumping -out and back in- at around 10 minutes per barrel. Now with the new pump it was taking around double that time if not more.
The new pumping setup
Tasting the wine!
So enough of the sob story. Now here comes the good part as usual, the food and drinks. This week we brought more typical Greek snacks, partially inspired by sarakosti (lent) but not particularly for that reason. In addition to the paksimadia, olives, and tsikoudia seen last week, there were also some_askordoulakous_ or volvous (small onion-like flower bulbs), loubinia (loupini beans) and toast made with olive oil, tomatoes and Cretan graviera cheese (similar to gruyère).
Overview of the food and drink spread.
Close-up of the volvous.
Shout-out to the guys that make the tasty paksimadia
All in all it was a fun and successful second and final week of racking. Now we wait for the wines to finish, coming back about once a month to check on them. Topping them off with more of the excess wine to make up for any evaporation and to keep the barrels full!
Last barrel racked!
Excuse the crappy photos, the lighting wasn't the greatest and I was using my phone. Here's the previous post from last week's wine-racking if you missed it. Stay tuned for some "prequel" posts discussing the process prior to this stage. Cheers!