Automatic Wine

Where a merry brook burbles its way through the valley there grows a sturdy vine. The roots of the vine quench the plant's thirst out of the splashing water as it passes.

Beneath the vine, imagine a grill resplendent with precision cut holes the size of grapes. Above the grill, quite naturally, there is a windmill. When the wind blows, the vast wooden vanes of this traditionally built stone windmill creak into action and turn, admittedly not very fast. Attached to the windmill there is an axle, and attached to the axle there is a cage gear, and resting upon the cage gear there is a weighted cane.

As should be obvious by now, the turning of the windmill turns the axle which turns the cage which causes the cane to flick forwards and back. The springyness of the cane means that it flicks further than from where it started, momentarily, but just long enough to give the vine a particularly firm thrash.

All ripe grapes respond to thrashing by plummeting to the earth. They fall through the grill and onto a small grinding apparatus powered by a small waterwheel (more on that later). The newly battered grape is now prone to releasing its precious juices, which it does, and they fall into the bucket of the waterwheel below. It now becomes evident to the casual observer that this slowly-turning water wheel is actually powered by grape juice.

A stirling engine sits above the whole apparatus. It places its posterior within the babbling brook, and its head is painted jet black and aligned towards the sun. It powers a small heating coil which acts to melt wax, dripping smoothly from the side and spreading to seal the bucket once it is full and on the descent. The side of the bucket allows gas exchange.

As the buckets reach the bottom, they automatically decouple and, under the momentum of the waterwheel, pick up a new bucket instead. The bucket-line, meanwhile, progresses perpendicuar to this to place a new bucket ready for pickup, and it does this by means of gravitation-powered sliding.

The deposited waterwheel bucket, containing fresh grape juice and the odd bit of grape skin, sealed with wax, but with a gas-permeable side panel, continues to slide downwards until it reaches a hollow cellar in the side of the hill across which the merry brook burbles.

Once a year, the owner takes his trusty mule and visits the automatic wine plant, replenishes the stock of waterwheel-buckets awaiting filling with the year before's empties, and removes all the wine which has been perfecting itself from last year. He may need multiple trips to do this as his mule cannot carry more than thirty four buckets at a time, and then only if he walks.