Pinot Grigio for £1.25 per 75cl bottle

5 day Pinot Grigio - Cantina

May 2014

Sometimes you see a claim and think "nah - that cant be true".

The box said 21 litres of Pinot Grigio ready to drink in 5 days - thats 28 x 75cl bottles at £1.23 each - there has to be a catch.

Of course, the catch is that its a wine kit and you have to ferment it yourself but if each bottle of finished Pinot Grigio costs about £5.00 per bottle in the supermarket thats £140 of wine for £34.50! Now the bank manager in me likes the look of those numbers - providing the quality is acceptable.

So a kit was acquired from the Homebrew Boat and the 5 day challenge accepted. Would it be a winner or a plonker....

We have all experimented with home made wine, or had it inflicted on us by well meaning friends and the results are usually far short of palatable. So how would this fare? Barry, the Homebrew Boat expert pointed out that wine kits have come a long way over the years and much care and attention is put into formulating the grape concentrate so the all you have to do is add water and the yeast, wait five days and then  bottle / drink. All the extra cost goes to the Exchequer in the form of a tax on the brewing process, that and the bottling / transport cost. Do the fermentation yourself you you get the same wine at a fraction of the cost. Sounds plausible.

Fermenting

So on Tuesday evening the  bag of grape concentrate and sugar was added to water in a fermentation bin and mixed. An airlock was added and the tub left alone. By Wednesday the airlock was bubbling like fury an thats the way it stayed till Friday evening when the process came to a sudden stop and the hydrometer confirmed it has reached the magical 1000.

Saturday evening saw the wine siphoned to a second brewing vat and a stabiliser added which stopped fermentation and the CO2 was stirred out. Then in went the first and second sachet of finings which dropped the sediment to the bottom and eight hours later the wine was ready to be bottled / drunk. Including the bottling the process took me maybe 1.5 hours and used the kit I already own for beer making.

End result - also reusing the kit bag for a 7ltr wine box.

But what about the taste?

The box said "With the typical light straw colour, the delicate frutiness and crisp acid, this is a bestseller of the Medium Dry whites." And I couldn't put it better myself. It will improve with a couple of weeks in the bottle, but first impressions are excellent - a blind tasting says it stands up to the shop bought "real thing" but for a fraction of the price. 

Great fruity white wine and over £100 saved - the bank manager is smiling!

Captain Jack's first command

Dream Daisy launched

May 2014

Well its boating Jim, but not as we know it. 

Today I swapped a steel hull for one made of fibreglass in the 1970's, and not a diesel engine in sight. 

A bit like Noah! 

This was a remarkable day as it was one in which Suzie, my daughter and her husband Jack launched their first boat. Can you remember the excitement of getting your very first boat? They both love the water and having tasted its pleasures on the broads they have bought a little boat of their own. 

Will it float?

First it was towed back from Cambridge and spent a week or two outside their house where much fettling and fiddling took place. And then came the time when it needed to be moved to Beeston Marina where it will spend the summer months on the Trent. Fortunately, I still have a towbar on the Mondeo from our pre-boating trailer tenting days so Dad's taxi became Dad's tractor and the craft was towed to water.

Down she goes

Paperwork completed a shed load of cash was saved by slipping the boat ourselves, which was achieved without incident of accident. But events took a slightly surreal twist as the newly vacated slipway was used to stage a landing of a detachment of US Army personnel.

And so Dream Daisy sits, bobbing and pitching on a pontoon in Beeston awaiting its first outing. The main two stroke motor has been coaxed into life for a few seconds so it should work whilst the back up, a 1957 British Seagull, has yet to prove its mettle. All nail biting stuff which comes with e-bay purchases!

Bow hauled to its mooring

With the river running high, the wind gusting to storm force and the boat an unknown quantity we decided that to get it afloat was enough for one day.

And my verdict: Wouldn't have missed it for anything!

Good luck Capt Jack and First Mate Suzie. Lots of fun awaits I am sure.

Droitwich Scenes

St Richard's Festival - Droitwich
May 2014

The St Richard's Festival in Droitwich is a relatively new event in the canal festival season which is really getting into its stride, run by the Worcester Birmingham and Droitwich Canals Society. The event was launched on the back of the canal restoration opening event in 2011. After a year's gap in 2012 Wychavon Council approached the Canal Society and between them they expanded the existing one day St Richard's Festival into the three day event we see today, operating from a canal side base in Vines Park over the early May bank holiday in 2013 and 2014.

Lazy Sunday afternoon

Perhaps the surprising thing is how the event has matured into something so substantial so quickly, with an estimated 10,000 visitors attending on the Saturday and in excess of 20,000 over the whole weekend. Perhaps the secret of its rapid success is its partnership with the the town who delight in the restored canal and whose activists lay on a broad spectrum of activities and entertainments, which really attracts a crowd. Not only are there the usual canal based attractions there are also food markets, art exhibitions, classic cars, medieval re enactment and war memorabilia exhibitions. Enough attractions and activities to make it a great day out in a remarkably attractive little town.

 Barry and Sandra from Areandare

 Two Captains

Whilst the local residents have been quick to recognise the event's appeal, the boating community have been a bit slower off the mark with only two Roving Trader boats taking advantage of the very significant sales opportunity.

The Canal Society is the powerhouse behind the festival, drawing on the significant resources and expertise which underpin the nearby Black Country Boating Festival and Parkhead Historic Boat events which take place in the autumn. Of course, two consistent years of good weather have helped boost the event's appeal and  David Wheeler, the Society's Chairman, confirmed that it will return to Vines Park in May 2015.

 Trading and towing

Another day in downtown Droitwich

St Richards Festival

A day of preparation

May 2014

What does one do on a lazy day in Droitwich, waiting for the festival to begin on Saturday?

Well, we are here early because the forecast for today (Thursday) was terrible and neither of us had the inclination to slog through a bunch of locks in the rain. Nor, for that matter, do we want to be rocking up at the 11th hour, as is so often our habit.

Wand'ring Bark starts to enter into the spirit

So, like the Homebrew Boat, we have been making preparations, which sounds almost Biblical. Boats have been shuffled to optimise the space available whilst ashore tents have been erected and the infrastructure connected up. Most crucially of all, I saw the barrels of beer being unloaded so as Forest Gump's mother used to say "that's one more thing".

The Homebrew Boat

The council have been hard at work too, delivering big rubbish mins and applying a fresh coat of paint to the Voulenteer, a pretend boat in Vines Park. The crews of Areandare and Wand'ring Bark have also been hard at work livening up their boats with some decorative bunting but, as ever, the Capt's attempts barely passed muster. She who must be obeyed was satisfied with the end results but less enthusiastic about the non environmentally sound plastic coated steel garden canes used to hold the bunting aloft. There was me thinking that fact that it matched our corporate green would be the all important factor in winning her seal of approval!

Volunteers get the site into shape

But we did some more practical work and a huge batch of Red Onion Marmalade with Sloe Jelly was chopped and produced ready for future events. In between all this industry I managed to find time to natter to Barry for an hour or two... and then a later session in the pub. Its a tough life.

Oh, have I mentioned the beard. I thought I would drop that in at the end.

A gauntlet (well a thinsulate glove to be 100% accurate) was both thrown down and picked up to let the facial hair grow for the duration of our time away. If you are not a Facebook follower of Helen this is the sequence for the 1st 5 days:

 Day 1

 Day 2

 Day 3

 Day 4

Day 5

Down in Droitwich

Destination Droitwich 2014 part 4

April 2014

A glorious day to be messing about on the river!

The weather hit new highs for 2014 which the temperature in the high teens driven on my a steady supply of sunshine.

Just messing about on the water....

By the time he had filled and swilled at the Stourport services, and made the near obligatory visit to Limekiln Chandlers we dropped down the two staircase locks into a sluggish River Severn which was very much in summer mode. No fear of floods today although the mud from the winter levels was still much in evidence.

The trip down the river was quite beautiful, the sun sparkling off the water and a warm breeze encouraging us to discard our fleeces in favour of tee shirts. 

Droitwich Barge Canal

We were fortunate in pairing up with a hire boat at Stourport which trailed us down the river and then into the Droitwich Barge Canal, the two boats making light work of the wide beam locks with Helen setting the locks ahead and the other boat closing up behind us. The Droitwich is getting much more established these days, with a few ad hoc moorings here and there and a wider navigation channel.

Its amazing that even after boating all these years its till possible to do something dangerously stupid? On our way up I hooked the centre rope onto a rather fat bollard and then as the lock emptied it pulled the boat forward and in doing so it started to slip the rope off the top of the bollard. Stupidly I stamped down on the rope just at the full weight of the boat was coming to bear on it and the tightening rope snatched my heel between itself and the bollard. Hmm, I thought as I tried to twist my foot out of the jaws - this could be trouble. As luck would have it I was wearing heavy steelies and the tough heel took the brunt of the squeeze and I emerged with just a slightly bruised foot. Good job I had forgotten my sandals....

Helen working lockside

And so we arrived in Droitwich, mooring just behind Sandra and Barry (aka The Homebrew Boat) and set about sampling some cocktails made with Wild Side cordials accompanied by a curry. I can honestly say the the first three tasted great but then my discernment left me and I found myself unable to provide any objective criticism.

So here we are, ready for our first festival afloat for the 2014 season. The sun is shining, the event infrastructure is being assembled around is and even the weather is set fair for the weekend. If you are in the Midlands and looking for a day out.... come to St Richards Festival at Droitwich.