New Wine, Old Wineskins

November 30, 2012

We bottled wine today, on this, our final workday at Nada.

Each of the monks has their own particular hobby or interest, as members in any healthy community (e.g. relationship, family, monastery, etc.) should have. Eric is a master carpenter/jack-of-all-trades. Ceil & Connie do pottery (not like do pottery, mind you!) Suzie sketches. And Thomas make homemade beer & wine. I can't vouch for the beer yet, but the wine was quite tasty. Before we'd even proven our worth Thomas had opened two bottles for our pleasure. We enjoyed an impromptu spread of cheese, crackers, olives, and wine in between sterilizing, filling, and corking 62 bottles of Nada Red.



Filling the bottles sounds easier than it actually is. Getting it to the top without spilling over took some skill...which I grew impatient with before mastering, as you can see from the drop cloth.

I moved onto corking, which is probably simple for anyone with any degree of upper-body strength. But for me, it was as struggle. I can assure you I wasn't smiling in the 2nd photo.




Then I moved onto a task more fitting of my abilities:





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