White plastic bins, buckets, and lids fill up our entire spare bedroom floor area. Crush is supposed to happen in 3 days – at least our crush, a 500 pound batch of Alexander Valley Zinfandel grapes. The plan is to de-stem and crush them with a borrowed contraption, into the bins. Anthony spent his day off sanitizing the containers with soda ash, citric acid, a power washer, and large scrub brush. I worried about whether these powders would wash into the surrounding flowers, but so far things are still in bloom. His hands, though, suffered; the abrasives rubbed some of his skin raw before I could insist he don latex gloves plus a hat to shade him from the 90+ degree heat (a mini heat wave in September).

This is my 9th year in Wine Country, but my 1st making wine. Hard to believe that soon we’ll have a barrel aging in our living room, and 12 1/2 cases of homemade wine!