My Take on all Things Moldovan: A Peace Corps Volunteer's Adventures While Living and Volunteering in Moldova

It’s now been two weeks since we picked all the grapes. As I wrote before, according to my host father, the grapes, once the process of preparation is complete, need a few weeks to ferment and then, “aici” – here, there is wine. So after we picked all the grapes, they were squeezed through an old fashioned, hand cranked box made of wood to extract the first batch of juice into huge barrels. After this, they were placed in the barrels with the juice to settle down. This is the first part of the process done directly after picking.

At intervals, boiling hot water is mixed in with the juice to help the process along. Meanwhile the "must" the first settling of the juice is siphoned off and placed run through a hose into the barrels in the basement which is the final resting place of the juice where it will become wine. After a week, it is time for the final part of the process to wring every drop of juice from those grapes. This "machine" is another wooden piece of apparatus and is very interesting to behold. It is hand cranked in circles to extract all the juice and can be quite tiring. All the juice joins the rest in barrels in the basement where it will ferment. Home made wine is a extensive, long and much involved process and gives me a new appreciation for the labor that goes into it.

I shall let you all know how it turns out.