This Monday Szilard and Veronika (from the Nádas Bormühely vineyard in Etyek) welcomed us to their cellar along with other members of the community to make sour cherry juice. They got a lot of sour cherries from a local producer that we pressed, using the same press that they normally use for pressing grapes to make wine. While the press was doing its magic, we got the task to clean the boxes that the cherries had been transported in so that they wouldn’t be all sticky.
It was quite intense as it was extremely hot outside but we took some breaks in the cool old cellar.
After a very short time we could get a glass of the fresh juice.
The juice was then pumped into a tank where it was heated up to 92°c, in order to sterilize it and make it longer lasting.
Then came our time to work and bottle it. One person was in charge of bottling the super hot juice into old wine bottles that we decided to reuse. For this task you had to be really focused in order not to overfill the bottles or risk burning yourself with the juice. Another task was to put the cork on the bottles. It was pretty simple as there is a machine that can do it for you. For some specifically shaped bottles, the ones made for champagne we had to use a cap and not a cork and that was done manually on a machine.
Szilard also gave us the pressed cherries so we could repurpose the pits rather than throwing them away and we have a few ideas for that although there is a lot of work on our hands to clean the pits and dry them.
It was a very interesting experience for all of us, to see the whole process and take part in it but also to feel like we’re part of a community where we all help each other and contribute.