The last days of vintage

As the end of September swiftly approaches, we are entering the final lap of our vintage marathon!  The weather at the moment is idyllic harvest weather with crisp blue skies and warm dry temperatures in the high 20s, with cool nights. If only we had had such weather during the full 6 weeks of harvest!  At the beginning of harvest in early August there was too much heat, and early September was interrupted by some short-lived but nasty thunderstorms!

The number of grape pickers varies daily between 7 to 60, depending on which variety is being picked,  the ripeness of the grapes, and the location of the vineyard.    There are large variations in quality and ripening between the grapes situated on the hilltops, and those in the low lying areas, even within the same row of vines.  Therefore, the grape pickers are constantly being transferred, away from 1 row which has only been partially picked, to another row of vines, or to another vineyard parcel, in a manner reminiscent of ‘Tordenskiolds ’soldiers’.   (Tordenskiold was a Norwegian admiral, whose merits are still sung about by Danish children, especially his cunning manoeuvring when he outsmarted the Swedish enemy by rapidly repositioning his meagre army to give the impression that his forces were much larger than they actually were.)

We call this ’selective’ harvesting, and  the same special care continues in the winery, where the grapes are fermented individually in small batches.  As our vineyards are over 15 years old, we know through experience from which vineyard area we can expect to harvest the best quality grapes, i.e. where we can hope to be picking this year’s Reserva or Incógnito 2009.