Pressing

Perhaps a technically bad photo - taken without flash in a dim cellar so blurred by movement - but one which captured best the spirit of today: helping a family group pick grenache grapes which are destined to make a sweet aperitif wine. Here the oldest and the youngest members of the group tread the grapes before putting them in the press operated by an old lorry jack. The wine is made from the first free-run juice of the pressing - it doesn't stay in contact with the red grape skins and pips and so the wine is pale pink at the most, probably more golden in colour. We reckoned we picked enough for about 400 bottles of this delicious appetiser.

It was a glorious day which confounded the weather forecasts, and if you had to work on a Sunday, this was the work you would have wanted to do, and it did me good.