Harvest time

To pick or not to pick that is the question – a balancing act more than ever this year. The rain around flowering time and relatively little sun late summer has resulted in a crop that is not as homogenous as usual – some bunches ripe and others not – so we, like many other vineyards in the UK are practising a ‘green harvest’ before the actual harvest. This is done to ensure that unripe grapes are removed, so only the ripest grapes go to make wine. Any small pale green or very small berries are snipped off. While the sugars in the grapes increase and acids reduce – there is a window of optimum harvest time when we hope fine weather will align.