les raisins

OK my Anglophone friends, here is another example of a faux-ami where a French word looks or sounds like an English word but means something different.  A raisin in French is a grape whereas in English a raisin is a dried grape.  In any case, pictured here is what I brought home from the grape harvest on Saturday.  As you can tell, this day made a big impression on me.  And speaking of impressions, and to complete the story, below is a description of the pressing itself.

Le pressoir is the press used to extract the juice from the grapes.  In this family operation, it is a manual press.  In the first photo above, the grapes (stems and all) are dumped into the press which is somewhat like a wooden barrel but there is space between the staves to allow the juice to run out.  The grapes are then covered with a wooden "top" and then wooden planks are added so as to distribute the pressure equally.   Atop the wooden planks sits the essence of the press which is a metal "pig" that has a long handle.  Pushing and pulling on the handle causes the pig to be screwed down tighter and tighter via a ratchet mechanism. When it can't be screwed down any tighter, the wooden top is removed and the grapes are "stirred up" as many of them will not have been crushed.  This pressing process is repeated a second and then a third time.  At this point the entire press is dismantled leaving what I would call a grape "cake".  In the photo you can see how the juice in the tray runs down into a collection bucket.  The "cake" is completely removed and the entire process starts over for the next load of grapes.  The last photo shows the containers into which the juice is collected.  Maybe in six months or so I can show you the final results.