Racking

It's OHI Day (Ohi is the Greek for no and this day is always spelled in block capitals). It's the day we proudly remember General Metaxa telling Benito Mussolini where to stick it in 1940. The Greeks, I am assured, are a very tolerant people, but when pushed that little bit too far they can become rather feisty. In March we stick two fingers up to our Turkish neighbours in the East, and in October we do the same to the Italians in the West. The Germans should consider themselves included in this latter. Everyone has the day off and there is marching and flag-waving, back-slapping and perhaps a little drinking.

Which meant that the vet was shut and we couldn't take Homer there for a final quick fix, and it meant that the telephone engineers weren't out trying to fix our failing phone connection. But since it was high time that the first batch of wine was racked, that is exactly what we did. The wine is siphoned carefully from one 54 litre demi-john into two clean and sterilised 25 litre demi-johns. Most of the 4 litres remaining at the base is dead yeast sludge to be discarded, but that still left us with a couple of glasses remaining to test. We think this batch is going to be rather good.

You may be able to spot behind the 2nd small demi-john and in front of the view, the numerous spider-cocoons I blipped fairly recently. Links and tags will have to be added later, the internet connection is hanging on only for seconds at a time.