Harvesting – In the Vineyards

YES! The 2015 harvest has come and gone! Sugar and acid levels were triple checked. The tanks and buckets and hoses all cleaned. The press and destemer were installed. And the wine makers had formulated a plan for which vineyards to harvest first, and which ones to do by hand versus machine harvest.

Machine Harvest

In the case of this year’s harvest, the first few vineyards to be picked were on flat terrain, ideal for employing the machine harvest method. Sure, there is a romantic idea of hand picking, but when costs and time are compared, hiring a machine to do the work makes sense.

This machine works by alining itself (manually-driven, but also somewhat automated) with a row and straddling the trellis so that both the sides of the same row go through the machine’s mechanisms. By shaking the vines using oscillating rods, this machine pops the berries right off from the stems! They are caught as they drop, then ride along a conveyor belt on the machine through a screening process to filter out any debris.

Shake, shake, shake

I was able to ride inside one of these grape-picking machines and ask the driver some questions. What I found out is that during the harvest season these picking machine drivers work around the clock. 14 hours a day. They are in demand because not every winery owns this specialized machine. And when the grapes are ready to be picked, the winemakers need the machine pronto.

“The Grapeliner”

I also discovered that the wrong vines do on occasion get picked. Many of the rows have no obvious indication of who owns them, and many of the same grape varieties are planted by different wineries. So what happens then? If it is caught it time, there is no real harm done. Otherwise, if the winemaker has a sense of humour, a deal is reached. Everyone knows everyone around here and everyone must work together.

Hand Harvest

But not all vineyards are on flat ground. In the Rheingau, the most prized wines come the very steep slopes along the Rhein river. At this time students are called in to help with the hand harvest. Some assemble at the winery at 8:00am to get driven to the vineyard. Others who know the location drive themselves. It is the beginning of October but there is a bit of a cold spell and a moderate amount of rain is predicted.

Quasimodo?

Let me tell you. Working on these steep slopes is HARD WORK. Even in the best-case senario where you have all pristine, perfect grapes and can just move along the vines cutting them off at lightening speed, you are still spending hour after hour hunched over on a 40 degree angle and moving heavy buckets as you go. Mentally, the work can be relaxing, since all your thoughts are focused on these berries. In the worst case situation, you have grape bunches with a mix of healthy grapes, noble rot, vinegar, oidium, and a host of other grape diseases all on the same bunch. This is particular slow and labour-intensive work. You cut one bunch off, scrap off the diseased parts, cut the noble rot grapes off into one bucket, place the remaining healthy grapes in another bucket, repeat. Grape bunch after grape bunch. This is mind numbing. This is also how some of the best sweet wines are made. By taking the time to let the grapes develop the nobel rot Botrytis, and then spending the efforts to separate them out from the normal good and and the just plain bad berries, you get a wine that is really high is residual sugars (think Auslese or late harvest) and sells for a lot of money.

Separating the berries

To ease the pain of this backbreaking work, food and drinks are provided by the employer. On a nice day, sitting down in the middle of the vineyards for a snack and looking out over the beautiful landscape almost makes you forget how many more rows of picking are ahead of you.

Enjoy the view!