For our first harvest things have gone remarkably well (so far, fingers still crossed). However, in wine making as is life, stuff happens. This year’s list of our harvest time “stuff” includes:
– a storm hitting Andillac – a neighbouring vigneron was so concerned for us that he telephoned the evening before it was forecast to arrive and also called round in the morning to stress that we needed to bring in any grapes there were ready. After checking our unpicked parcels Jack decided we could harvest the majority of our remaining red grapes. An hour later the machine was picking, for the last 15 minutes in an impressive lightening storm, but by then 85% of the fruit was safe and dry in the winery. Heavy rain at harvest time can be bad as it dilutes the sugar/potential % alcohol in the grapes, damage grape skins and can drastically accelerate the spread of disease.
– our “new to us” tractor breaking at the end of the first day of harvest and ending up at the garage for a week. This could have been a disaster but a very very kind neighbour lent us his Fent (the Rolls Royce of tractors apparently – Jack was a bit nervous driving it but otherwise a happy man)
– our electricity blowing and our water being turned off – both on picking days – happily services were resumed in the nick of time
– our remorque ((the blue trailer in the photo) that receives the grapes from the picking machine, lifts on hydrolics and pushes the grapes gently into the destemmer) developing a hydrolic oil leak worthy of Red Adair – luckily it ran dry and stopped working only after the last lift we needed from it!
Dispite a few learning experiences like these our first harvest has been incredibly interesting and exciting. Tomorrow we will harvest by hand our young Braucol – very low yield but perfectly formed and sweet – estimated 13.5-14%. After that all the activity for the next couple of months will be in the winery. We plan to have a couple of beers to mark the occasion!