Why would you bother picking grapes by hand when you can use a machine? Most grapes around the world are picked by machine but small growers often choose to pick by hand. Why?
Harvesting by machine allows growers to get grapes in quickly. This is useful if the weather breaks and there is a danger that leaving the grapes on the vine may spoil. However, a machine picks everything – good grapes and bad, healthy grapes and rotten. If these grapes are removed before sending the machine in then of course what is picked is what is left on the vine so can be a good alternative and allow growers to get grapes back to the winery and process them quickly.
Hand picking is more selective but of course this relies on the pickers knowing what to pick! It’s actually not always obvious to the inexperienced eye what should be picked and what should be left on the vine. Tiny bunches of grapes that appear later on in the season (known as grappions) never fully mature. These should be avoided and can lower the quality of the juice.
Most of the growers that we work with here in the Loire pick by hand. They employ people who know what to pick and what to leave and sort the grapes a second time upon arrival at the winery. A lot of Chenin grapes are picked in successive passes through the vineyard with only selective parts of the bunch being picked each time. A machine can’t do this of course so the human eye and hand is essential. This is the case when making the lovely sweet wines of the Layon valley in Anjou.
It takes around 50 pickers to replace a machine and it is becoming harder and harder for growers to find local people to do the vintage which is both repetitive and hard work. Increasingly we are seeing teams come over from Eastern Europe just for the harvest.
This is however, something rather convivial about picking by hand. Knowing that you can make a difference by doing a good job.
