Big

Well in all probability by the time you see this you will already have received a red balloon from Blip to tell you it's my second birthday. It is nothing of the sort! OK I may have clocked up 730 blips, but not as any form of respectable achievement. It's more like serial internet littering. I've not even managed 200 in a row. So please, no shoulder slapping for that.

This on the other hand is a much bigger deal. We thought we had split the harvest roughly in half between last week and this, but we were massively mistaken. Does it look as though that entire pile of fruit is going to fit into that barrel? It took two of us about four hours to cut them all and almost another hour to mill them. As luck would have it they did all fit in, with just enough room for the butter-dish of must left-over yesterday from last week's harvest. This is a much wetter (juicier) brew than last week's (more fruit/fewer stalks) and I would not be the slightest bit surprised if we filled at least another two 54 litre demi-johns.

Taking into account the loss of volume which occurs during racking, when the developing wine is siphoned off from the spent yeast, we are still looking at about 150 litres of finished wine, which equals 200 bottles. We are still a very far cry from being self-sufficient in this particular department!