Monday, August 29, 2016

Harvest Diary 2016 - rapid ripening

What a difference a week makes!  We were a little taken by surprise on Thursday when we checked the sugar levels of our grapes in Tuchan - a healthy 13°.  As everyone has been talking about a late harvest it has been panic stations here to get everything ready in time for what for us is going to be an early harvest - at least for the whites.

Clean picking crates all ready to go!

We drove down to the vineyard in Maury as this vineyard usually ripens earlier than the vines in Tuchan.  But this year for some reason the grapes are not quite as ripe as those in Tuchan.  To get an idea of the sugar level we take a representative sample of the grapes from the vineyard in a plastic bag, squeeze the grapes and measure the sugar content of the juice in a refractometer. This is me looking at the level in our vineyard in Maury.

Sugar baby!
So we now have a plan - start picking in Tuchan on Monday (29th August) and then move on to the vines in Maury.