Behind the Scenes: Harvesting at Winegarden Estate
Ever wonder how the grapes get from the vines to the bottles? Harvesting – the process of picking the grapes – is one of the most important steps in wine making! Here in the northern hemisphere, where we usually experience warmer weather in June, July, and August, harvesting usually happens anywhere between August and October, whereas in the south harvest takes place between February and April. It all depends on two things: the temperature outside, and the type of grape!
Here at Winegarden Estate, our harvesting season typically lasts for a week and usually takes place around the second week of October. This year, because of the warmer weather we experienced during the spring and summer months, we harvested early! We called our family and friends and had their help picking the grapes in the last week of September.
Harvest 2020: As you can see – it’s always a good time and a lot of fun!
It’s important to harvest the grapes at precisely the right time – grapes get sweeter as they ripen, so leaving them on the vines for too long (or not for long enough) can ruin a whole batch!
In addition to taste, there are four other things to look for that indicate whether or not the grapes are ready:
Colour of the grapes
Stems and seeds are brown
Seeds are soft to chew
Grapes will be full and plump, and will be easy to pull from the vine
Once we determine that the grapes are ready, it’s all hands on deck! While some larger, mass-produced wineries prefer to harvest using mechanical methods, we harvest our grapes by hand.
Machine harvesters have come a long way, and work by moving along the rows of grapevines and shaking the grapes from their stems. Although harvesting by machine is faster, we prefer to handpick our grapes. It’s more gentle on the fruit, and allows us to pick only the best grapes, leaving behind those that aren’t quite ripe enough or may have become rotten. It’s a little pricier and takes longer, but we think it’s well worth it!
Once grapes are picked, they have to be sorted to ensure that only the best ones make it into our wines. After those best-of-the-best grapes have been chosen, the crushing begins! Don’t worry, thanks to modern technology, we don’t crush them with our feet. We use machines to crush and de-stem the grapes, without crushing the stems or seeds, which contain the tannins. Tannins determine how bitter or astringent wine will be – but that’s a whole other blog topic itself! We’ll cover that another day.
Although some wineries may leave white wine grapes out of the crushing and destemming process, we de-stem both red and white. Afterwards, they get separated into their tanks. The reds stay on the skins & pips longer than the whites, which give the reds a higher amount of tannin and the whites low to no tannin. When we’re happy with the colour and flavour of each, we take the juice off the skins and collect the skins to be used further during distilling, producing our Grape eau de vie (similar to Grappa!).
Check out our large variety of award-winning selection of wines, liqueurs, and distilled spirits all made onsite, and let us know your favourites!