The vineyard visit

The grape harvesting season is here!  

We were chatting to a couple of friends (who have lived here quite a while now) about the process and learnt their son is the mechanic for one of the local vineyards. They very kindly arranged to take us down one evening to have a chat with him and watch the harvest. It was fascinating.... 

Pictures are in reverse order!

Starting near the end of the process with a gondola unloading the picked grapes into the truck trailer ready for transporting, in this case, to New South Wales. A ten hour drive away.

The truck and trailer are driven onto a weigh bridge and careful note is taken of the various weights. Each gondola load is also weighed so the final weight of the grapes can be calculated

Before this happens the load is sprayed with a sulphate based chemical to stop the grapes fermenting on their long journey. Apparently this comes out during the finings stage of the wine making,

I just could't resist the sun set which did get more colourful as the evening progressed.

Will B (the mechanic) drove us to the harvesters, due to the hours they work the work force is mainly made up of students and backpackers. The grapes are rarely picked during the day as it is the hottest time of the year. So work starts at about 6.30 pm, it is still pretty warm then and goes on through the night until the 'run' is complete. The harvesting season does vary but generally last from 6 weeks to just over two months. Makes you feel weary just thinking about it!

View from the top of the picker, in the distance are the lights of another harvesting team.

A team of three people are used, one for the tractor with harvester, one tractor with the gondola and normally a young lady acting as picker keeping the harvesters machinery free from leaves and other vegetation. The tractors are driven very slowly along the vines, gondola attached to one and the self centering harvester to the other. We were very surprised to see the way the vines are treated. The harvester centers the vine and using fairly stiff rubber fingers 'wacks' and shakes the vines freeing the grapes and some leaves etc., This is bashed onto a series of conveyor belts, some vegetation blown away and the larger vegetation picked off by a 'picker' finally being loaded into the gondola.

Apparently hand picked grapes give a different depth of flavour to the finished wine but is so labour intensive and time consuming this process is only used for the best of wines. Which now makes sense as to why some wines are far more expensive than others.

Some huge thank yous go to David Brown (vineyard owner) and who took time out during this really busy time to talk to us about his vineyard; to Will B, who spent a good couple of hours very patiently answering our questions and showing us the harvest. And to his Dad, Graham for taking us there.... and home again.

It will be though but we will be doing our very best to support our local producers........ hic!