Why Handpick wine grapes?

We changed from machine harvesting to handpicking back in 2014. Hand harvesting brought a different spirit. We found hand picking joyful and intense, rather than panicked and noisy. The selection and care of handpicking translated into better quality wines. Harvest remained a moment of pressure, the year’s work coming to fruition, but it felt vibrant rather than crushing.

Picking is convivial. Chatter and song break out intermittently.

The first year we moved to 100% hand-picked Sean and I carried bins up to the tractor together and I felt a connection with him I hadn’t felt in a while. Hand harvesting created that vibe.

We have energy in the morning, the team moves up and down the rows, like a flock of birds, separate but together.

By midday, the sun is baking, and we move slowly, like the stickiness on our hands is sticking us to the ground.

There is community in singing together, the feeling of the year coming together in a joyful crescendo.

In a couple of hours of picking opposite Cécile, our apprentice at the time, on these rows of ancient Semillon, I learnt more about her hopes and dreams, more about who she was, than in the previous months of working together.

Why bother to pick by hand given it is more expensive particularly in a high labour cost economy like France?

8 Reasons to Hand Harvest/ Handpick quality wine grapes

To respect the vines

This is particularly important for our heritage Semillon and Merlot vines  – old vines – as the machine can rough them up.

For the quality of the Fruit

For the quality of the fruit. We sort the grapes as we pick. When we take care through the growing season it doesn’t make sense to start the grapes journey to wine with a thrashing by a 3-ton harvest machine.

To keep the sulphites low

When we hand pick the fruit is whole so not oxidising so we can use lower sulphites (the preservative used in wine). Imagine two bunches of grapes on your kitchen table, smash one with your fist and leave the other whole and return a couple of hours later. The smashed one (like a machine harvested grape) will already be oxidised, its quality compromised, while the other will be perfect. Sulphites are then required to stop the oxidation.

To be vegan friendly

Machine harvested grapes always include ‘critter collateral’, small animals like mice, lizards, snakes, frogs.

For the harvest vibes and human connection

For the positive energy, community and care in the process of hand-picking. We feel a totally different ambience even on long days of hard work.

To avoid compaction of the soil

A grape harvest machine can weigh over 5 tons with harvest inside. This weight creates soil compaction. This compaction kills vine roots and asphyxiates the soil. A living soil needs air. Compaction is an enemy of vine health and of grape quality.

To allow us to cultivate agroforestry and biodiversity

When we changed to hand picking all our grapes and were no longer obliged to keep the trellis clear for the harvest machine, Sean encouraged ivy to grow up trellis poles every 20 metres or so, to feed pollinators. Ivy is one of relatively few plants that flowers in late autumn for the bees and their ilk, and it is a massive biodiversity booster. An oak tree with ivy can host double the number of species that the same oak tree without ivy would host. We have trees in the vine rows that boost biodiversity and offer climate moderating effects – this would be impossible if a harvest machine had to straddle the row. Caro Feely’s latest book Cultivating Change, book 4 in the Vineyard Series (available from Amazon and Apple Books everywhere), goes into this and the magic of biodiversity in detail.

To Protect and Respect the Winemaker 😉

One more reason to for hand picking is to keep winemaker Sean’s fingers intact – Our first harvest in 2006 was a baptism of fire. It was a race against the clock with a heat wave followed by significant rain. We got through 90% of it without major mishap but on the last small section of Cabernet sauvignon we were all exhausted. We started the Cabernet harvest at 4.00 am. At 7.00 am after checking on our daughters I found Sean standing over the sink holding a bloody tea towel over his hand. “I’ve chopped my finger off,” he said.

“Luckily it didn’t fall into the grapes,” he said, making light of the serious situation, as we sped to Bergerac Hospital Emergency. A quarter of his finger was gone, chopped up by the harvest trailer and spewed out with the rinsing water onto our farm. Seán had become part of our land. The surgeon told me it would take six weeks of total rest and then another six months for him to have normal function in the shortened finger. Despite the doctor’s advice he was back in the winery four days later. We got through those critical weeks despite Seán being one-handed. Find the full story and more, in my first book Grape Expectations (available from Amazon and Apple Books everywhere).

Conclusion

Handpicking is part of the ethos of natural winemaking.

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