The wine is in the vats...

And has now been bubbling away for while so while the olive nets are being repaired and things calm down, I thought I would say a few things about harvesting grapes.

As an annoying younger brother, I tend to ask questions of my sister about the whole winemaking process- this is my first full year of production so I have a lot of questions and one of them was why we do so much by hand...

So this is what Charlotte adds:
Many estates use machines to remove leaves.  This is often done without observation of the particular conditions of individual plants or consideration of the weather. Forecasting what the seasons will bring is a core part of winemaking and fine-tuning in the vineyard can improve or save a harvest. Working robot-like to a standardised calendar has created many problems including the spread of fungal infections of the vines and is not kind to the vines.

This year has been a very difficult year for most of the vineyards in Italy- a cold, wet July followed by a very hot and dry August lead to grapes that in some vineyards resembled raisins rather than fresh grapes as the vines were sucking back all the water back into the plant to save themselves. Not ideal- we widely hear reports that quantities are down by more than 30%- the vine equivalent of the Great Depression...

But we have managed to avoid the raisin issue completely by leaving a lot of leaves on the vines this year providing extra cover. This wouldn't be possible if we didn't work by hand. The result is that we have actually produced the same amount as last year and we are very happy with the quality as well.

Look at these

When it comes to picking the grapes, the mechanical harvester is incredibly violent, potentially damaging to the vines and to the grapes both, which leads to wounded vines and fermentation before the grapes reach the cantina. But perhaps more important, it takes out that human element of selection- particularly important for the pinot noir where there are a lot of  small secondary bunches of grapes that aren't as sweet or as ripe at harvest time- that leaves out all but the healthiest grapes.

I leave you with a clip of video of a mechanical harvest- I certainly wouldn't want to be a vine in their vineyard...

And one at Chandon in France- done alarmingly fast by hand!