Slotovino: Winemaking 2019. Warning: may contain disturbing images of gunk.

Poor grape-growers we may be but we fancy ourselves as winemakers. Not everything comes off but we've had our successes especially when buying grapes fro The Wine Grape Club in Hatfield.

It's a family affair that has been going since 1978. Chris Lisney Smith (left) and the dad of his son-in-law (right) man the JCB and trolleys while Mrs Chris mans the cash desk and daughter guids Chris on his JCB as he unloads countless pallets from the vast refrigerated lorries that come in from Puglia and Valencia.

It's amazing how quickly and deftly Chris and family can unload and store a lorry-load of grapes without losing a single one - a talent akin to an F-1 driver completing a race without making contact with another vehicle, although a bit slower it must be said.

We got in on the very first day and decided to buy Tempranillo. The only alternative was Sangiovese. This had gone reasonably well but we wanted a change.

Tempranillo is hardly ever mentioned in Slotovino not because we don't like it but because it is so ubiquitous in Spain that you can't avoid it. There might well be some statistic in Spain such as 'You are never more than 2 metres away fom a bottle of Tempranillo' for all the other varieties get a look in.

Last year we bought Garnacha not because we particularly wanted to but because it was there. It turned out to be a fantastic grape to work with. Very obliging unlike the Macabeu we also bought in 2018 and had to pour down the drain.

The surgery was ready.

We trod and pressed 10 litres of Tempranillo without maceration.

The rest of the grapes were macerated for 20 hours, half on their own skins, pips and stalks (left) and the other on the skins of the first - unmacerated batch - as well as their own (right). That was an experiment to see what happens with a maceration on that degree of must. We aren't very hopeful and have taken to calling this batch our 'Bad Tempranillo.'

Tempranillo must

As last year we spread what must was left on some of our new vines. It's supposed to be good fertilizer.

In the foreground the 'Good Tempranillo' with the beautiful 'First Press Tempranillo' behind. We don't know if this will turn out to be a rosado or maybe a kind of 'chiaretto' for want of a better word: a wine between rose and red. Actually we love that kind of thing and would be proud indeed to produce such a wine.

As for the 'Bad Tempranillo,' not surprisingly that fermented quite athletically but later we could taste the prominent tannins. Maybe this wine can soften with time.

We have placed it in small amphora made by our in-house potter/amphora-maker.

We bought a glue gun to seal these amphora. It's a great product. You can even use sealing wax in it.

Actually, we had been much more scientific in coating our amphora interiors this year. Instead of laboriously trying to paint the insides with a pastry brush, we just melted the (food grate) beeswax which we bought in granules this year, poured some into the amphora and swilled it around until it had made an even coating of the interior. Now why didn't we think of that in 2018?

Our next visit to the Wine Grape Club a few days later was timed to co-incide with a delivery of their Malvasia from Puglia. Although found in many places, we think Malvasia is an underrated variety. We have to admit also having to throw out the Malvasia we bought last year but that might have been because we were trying to make an Orange wine with it and probably left it in contact with its skins too long.

Right after filling you can already see deposits collecting in the bottom 20%

This section is not for the faint-hearted (see our warning above). First you tread and press the grapes and put the juice into a carboy (23 l) and 2 x 5l jars.

Quite a lot of what goes in is gunk. A mixture of lees and detritus really.

Sights like these are a great incentive to do some racking.

The surprising thing is that this dirty gunk doesn't seem to spoil the juice. We all know about wines fermented 'sur Lie.' We suppose thes lies are finer ones which come from spent yeast rather than these gross lies but we're basically making this up as we go along. We could be wrong but our inclination is to keep wines as 'clean' as possible.

Amidst all this winemaking with bought-in grapes there was a very tiny amound of Solaris and Goldriesling we had managed to snatch from the jaws of the birds that feasted on all our other grapes this year.

Solaris - that's all folks!

Micro Demijohn with Solaris/Goldriesling juice

The grand total of this Solaris/Goldriesling harvest was about 4 litres. The most expensive wine ever made?

Necessity the mother of invention: bottle fermenting with olive oil airlock.

With such microscopic quantities you have to be inventive as to how to house the juice. Here we had about 2.25 litres left over so we've taken a leaf out of the ancient winemakers' book and simply put a layer of olive oil on top of the not-quite-fully-fermented wine to seal it while also providing an airlock if any bubbles need to escape. The cling film on top is to stop ant flies or dust getting in. When it comes to pouring the wine we'll try to suck up the oil with a turkey baster.

You may be able to see the yellow 5l jar of Solaris/Goldriesling over the left hand shoulder of our big amphora.

Still, all we want is a bottle or two just to taste.

And now for the truly X-rated stuff. Moscato Passito.

Moscato before drying

The idea was to buy Moscato grapes (from Puglia) at Hatfield and lay them out to dry for a few weeks.

Moscato after drying

This we did. Having made a successful Moscato in 2017 (quite a hit if we say so ourselves) we had read that if you leave the grapes on the vine so they shrivel naturally or dry them on mats or slats you get a super-concentrated sweet wine referred to as Passito. So we laid out our grapes in the living room. Three weeks later the pleasantly grapey smell which had accrued was beginning to become rather vineous so we reckoned we should cut the process short before things got too evolved and goodness knows, insects started to appear from nowhere.

Gathering up the grapes we made a rather unappetising mash after treading and put this in a 15l Damigiano.

It was not a pretty sight even after racking and filtration. It looked more like olive oil than wine. We started thinking perhaps we should ahve destemmed the grapes from their dried out and blackened stalks but what is done can never be undone as the famous Scottish vintner said.

And now for the horror-shot. All those of a weak disposition scroll down now!

Yes while our backs were turned as it were, a violent fermentation blew the lid off leaving the demijohn caked in black crust with black sludge at the bottom. It looked like something left behind after a volcanic eruption. We cleaned this up, and racked the juice into a carboy. The colour still hadn't improved any.

Passito siphoning into our large amphora.

Nevertheless since the liquid showed no more sign of fermentation and actually tasted super-sweet in a good way, we decided the time had come to put it into our big amphora - the one that had been such a disaster last year.

Just to recap, we had placed whole berries of Solaris into the amphora. The beeswax coating of the interior was patchy and soon dark stains appeared on the outside where the juice had leached out. No proper fermentation ever occurred despite the late addition of yeast. We later discovered that the lid had not been airtight. Ther was later an unpleasant smell whenever we walked past it. We can only cast a veil over the grand opening this summer. Our amphora/potter said he thought he could clean it up ready for a new filling this year by re-firing it. This he did and after emmitting a terrible smell, came out more or less pristine ready for sealing with our new patented method.

We sealed the top as well as the bung and airlock good and proper this time. We even poured a film of olive oil on the surface of the moscato inside the way the ancients did to keep their wines fresh.

We have hopes that come perhaps a less grand opening in summer 2020 there will be a golden liquid to be extracted - albeit with plenty of sludge at the bottom of the amphora.