Wine and other news

Yesterday,with God and Gilad's help,brought batch #1 of this year's wine to bottle;initial trial swigs indicate great saki-like smoothness concealing,one hopes,sufficient deceptive grunt.Of course,not containing even a whiff of nasty sulphurous substances,the wine seems clean and straightforward,which I tend to like.Now I have to run around for another 30-or-so empty bottles for batch#2,and maybe the kiddush-wine batch,still unbottled from 2004,and,when last sampled,coming along nicely,thank you.
Those stacked shallow dishes I asked you about last week all survived their bisc,I am pleased to say,thus adding to our store of ceramic knowledge.Past performance,as the investment brochures point out,is no indication of future outcome,so I'm going to mix up a huge bucket of one of Peter Ilsley's crystal glazes,and another of my old version,and plunge,for the next week or two,into the slippery chaotic world of high-temperature crystal growth.