Harvest

Now it's time to get your hands dirty.

In the southern hemisphere, the grapes are harvested between February and April. While in the northern hemisphere, they are harvested between August and October. White wine is usually harvested first and then the red grapes, as red grapes take a little longer to ripen though there are reds that ripen early e.g. Tempranillo, which comes from the spanish word 'temprano' meaning early. The later you harvest a grape or the longer you leave it on the vine, the sweeter the grape. Hence, if you like a sweet wine, that is not a dessert wine, look for wine that is harvested late in the season. Then of course, the type of grape also has a factor but lets stick to the harvest.

There are two methods of harvesting, hand picking and the other machine harvest. Both produce wine that you can drink, it's just that the hand picked grapes produce a finer quality wine, though there is evidence to suggest that machine harvested wine can also produce premium wine, as recorded in California and New Zealand.

Machine harvesting does have its advantages but they do harm the grape and carry so much more to the press i.e. bruised grapes, MOG (Material Other than Grapes) which could include shrubs, leaves and bugs and no variation between ripe, unripe and spoiled. The machine violently shakes the vines to loosen the grape and compresses the soil.

Whereas, the grape pickers hand select the grape making sure that there are no blemishes. The grapes that are picked are ripe but the grapes that are unripe or spoiled are not picked. Pretty much the opposite of machine harvesting. In some regions like Burgundy in France, it has been made compulsory to harvest by hand.

Lastly it is more expensive to hand pick wine due to manual labour than it is to machine harvest.

To machine harvest or not to machine harvest? That is the question.

Peace,
Cristian