Night harvest.

Night harvesting is generally done by mechanical harvesters rather than hand pickers. Mechanical harvesting is not really a bad thing (although it makes the traditionalists wince). The fruit is "picked" while it is cool (which is a good thing), and only the ripe fruit tends to get knocked off the vines, leaving behind the green fruit, stems and botrytised clusters. Often the fruit goes straight into the crusher within seconds of harvesting.

Mechanical harvesting is not generally done for small wineries, but more for large operations that have hundreds or thousands of acres that need to be picked very quickly. The quality of the resulting wine is a matter of where those acres are, how well tended the vines are and how the fruit is processed after harvesting.

Tom S

I feel like a fish that has just gone for the bait... ;-)))

Hey Tom, nothing wrong with mechanical harvest, so long as you don't mind knocking 10 years off the useful lifespan of your vines, and so long as you dont mind having wine made from grapes (including rotten bunches), snails, spiders and all kinds of critters, leaves, etc.. You get terroir alright, with some added protein.

Interesting, in Champagne no mechanical harvest is allowed, no matter how big the winery. And some are really big around there.

Here in Bandol, only the lowest quality wineries use mechanical harvesting.

Mike

Mike Tommasi, Six Fours, France email link

Mike, I've never heard that mechanical harvesting shortens the useful lifespan of grapevines. But then, I've never heard that it doesn't, either. Is there any emprirical evidence to support your claim? It has a certain amount of superficial logic to it. Grapevines do get shaken up a bit when harvested mechanically, but strong winds can do the same thing and they can happen many times a year rather than once a year. Frankly, I'm skeptical about this.

Grapes harvested mechanically at night can sometimes make it to the crush pad before sunrise. And all those open crates of hand-harvested grapes don't attract their share of critters before they get to the winery? But I agree that, in general, grapes that are hand-harvested by experienced pickers and that are handled carefully afterward are best. But this requires a substantial amount of inexpensive labor.

The fact that a practice is not allowed doesn't necessarily mean that there is anything wrong with it. For all I know, the purpose of the regulation could be to protect jobs. But I wouldn't expect anyone to publicly admit that. Very often the practices that are prohibited in specific regions are ones that no one there would want to use anyway. This is probably true to some extent in every winemaking country in the world.

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I'd put my money on gimmick.

It seems to be a generally agreed thing, most people cite damage to the rootstock, but some will mention the better results from hand picking, there is inevitably a better selection done even by workers with little experience, removing things like leaves, critters, rotten berries, and those small bunches known here as grapillons...

Well, there is no shortage of people from Poland, Morocco, Tunisia who come here seasonally to harvest.

Well, no, I disagree because here in France it is very difficult to find locals to do the job, that's why they import migrants (sounds like California?). So no, if anything, finding the workers is a real hassle. Smaller wineries have their circle of regular pickers, a mix of friends and labourers.

Mike

Mike Tommasi, Six Fours, France email link

It might just be a matter of making the picking easier on the pickers. Harvesting earlier and earlier each year (at least here in France) it can be damn hot out in the vines, so night picking might be a way to avoid having all your picker friends opt out due to the heat. I imagine Australian picking conditions are even harder...

Mike

Mike Tommasi, Six Fours, France email link

Yeah, but you also get MOG with hand-picked fruit. Not to worry though; most of it falls out at the first racking, and a little bentonite takes care of the residual protein. :^D

I don't think mechanical harvesting would work very well for Champagne. For one thing, the fruit is purposely picked on the underripe side, so it wouldn't come off the clusters very well. For another, Champagnes (and champagnes ;^)) are whole cluster pressed, so mechanical harvesting is definitely out.

I've had some very fine California Cabernets made from mechanically harvested grapes. Field Stone winery comes to mind. The point is, if the fruit is good to begin with it can be made into good wine - no matter how it is harvested. Most of the good stuff here _is_ hand-picked however.

Tom S

Mike, I believe you're right on all counts here. But it's also my sense (IOW, I have no empirical evidence to support it) that grapes harvested in the cool of the night fare better after picking than ones harvested under the noonday sun. Hand-harvesting in darkness has its obvious disadvantages, whereas it makes no difference in machine harvesting.

In an earlier posting I suggested that protection of jobs might be a reason for prohibiting machine harvesting in Champagne. Your response and a re-reading of my own posting made me realize that I should have been more careful to ensure that the suggestion was not to be taken too literally. I was just citing a possible motivation for such a regulation and did not intend for it to be applied specifically to Champagne.

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