Focussing on Harvest Procedures

I promised in an earlier post that I would write a couple of entries about the processes involved in getting the grapes from the vineyards to the tanks. So I took some time yesterday to take a couple of quick snapshots. I will post these processes in parts and not all at once.

In the MCC post I showed photos of how the grapes are picked. All grapes of Darling Cellars producers are picked by hand (mostly because bushvines can't be harvested with machines). This is hard work and the sun is unforgiving. It also puts quite a strain on your back.

So the grapes are picked by hand in the vineyard, put on the grape trailer and taken to Darling Cellars.

So the first action that happens then, is that the chemical properties (sugar, acid and pH) gets tested in our laboratory. A juice sample is taken of the load and analyzed with a Mettler.





The results is given to the tractor driver and he then moves to the scale. The gross weight is taken and put into our management system on the computer. Then the driver takes his load to the specified crusher, depending on which cultivars are harvested where.


More of this at a later stage...