I made wine!!!

Whenever you are leading with Backroads you are given a leader house to stay in wherever you may be assigned. The great thing about Croatia is our leader house is actually a family home. As in...there is a family that lives here. Tony, Nikka, their son Mato, his wife Julianna and their children Matea and Anton. It is actually a really good break from the backroads world and be invited into "normal" Croatian life.

What is extra awesome is that this particular family is well educated, liberal minded and completely sustainable. They make everything that they eat with the exception of meat, sometimes fish and cheese. They grow all their fruits and vegetables, bake their own bread, make their own olive oil AND make their own WINE (and grappa which is kind of like brandy).

They only harvest the grapes one day each year and they have to make the wine that day so that the grapes don't go bad and I just happened to be here! Lucky me!!!

SO first they harvested the grapes. I was not actually here for that part because I was riding to Dubrovnik to take a walking tour regarding the war in Dubrovnik. Learning. Once the grapes have been harvested they keep them covered and out of the sun as much as possible so they don't go bad before smashing.

After they harvest the grapes they have to weigh them. They have this archaic scale that works just fine with a long rod and counter-weight. Apparently this contraption was Tony's granfather's originally, but it works so as we would say in America, "if it ain't broke, why fix it?"

After weighing the grapes you smash them. This machine is from the 60's...but again...it works. You throw them all in (skins and stems and all) and then the machine crushes them releasing the juice and you put all of the juice and grape remains into a larger plastic tub for fermenting.

After you have added all the grapes to the big (white) plastic tub you measure with a cylinder and pipet that acts as a buoy and measures the amount of sugar that the grapes naturally provide. This determines how much sugar they need to add, not only for flavor but also for fermentation purposes. Fermenting the grapes only takes about a week. It actually starts NOW. They will put a big "presser" on top tonight and that smashes them down to squeeze out more juice. By the time we finished tonight it had actually already started to "bubble". By this time tomorrow if you lean over the tub you could pass out from the CO2 and fall in and drown. Apparently people die this way every year! It's in the paper.

After a week in the big, white plastic tub the "grape juice" is filtered out (through a drain on the bottom) into wooden barrels and then left in there for 3-4 months. (Now here is where really good wineries would probably say at least 2 years...but who's counting...it's home-made!) All the other stuff (the stems and grape remains, etc) is used to make the grappa, but I have no idea how, because we didn't do that. We made wine.

Last step: they move it once more into steel casks which stops the wine's aging process but allows them to open and draw from the casks as often as they want. So that next year when I am here we will be drinking MY wine.

This last picture is a plaque on the wall outside their home. You can't read it because of the light and you woudn't be able to anyway because it is in Croatian, BUT it is a memorial plaque to the rebuilding after the Homeland War. In 1991 this house was burned to the ground as were all the homes around here. It was five years before they were allowed to return to their own house, living in hotel rooms in the city and commuting every day to rebuild it. That was only 19 years ago. All the adults here remember it vividly. Incredible.

See more pictures of the wine-making process here.