Now comes the Green Harvest!

24 Jul 2014 – General

One of our most labour-intensive tasks on the vineyard-calendar is the ‘green harvest,’ when we are thinning-out the crop.

Here the number of clusters on the vine is reduced-depending on the variety, this can amount to half of what’s hanging. The process serves to intensify all organic materials and constituent elements in the clusters remaining. We find it particularly essential with the red wines, in order to achieve optimum ripening of the grapes year after year.

The vine will normally develop two and even three clusters on each shoot. The top cluster is always a couple days behind in its development, and so we remove it. Also, it would be receiving less sunshine, so the evolution of tannins and development of colouring agents would be retarded.

The green harvest actually requires more effort than picking the grapes in autumn does. But then, this thinning-out makes the harvest to follow easier, since there are not so many bunches left to pick and the grapes are more evenly ripened.

So we can often avoid having to make an overly rigorous selection in the vineyards- and ultimately, it’s easier to get our hands on the clusters, since they all will now be hanging in plain sight at the lower end of the leaf-canopy.