Hand harvesting isn't the half of it

I hate the hoorah implied by ‘hand-picked’. I hate it more round about the fourth-plus week of repetitive vineyard work. At the worst of times in the vines, ‘bored’ is an understatement. But ‘hand-picked’ is a misrepresentation. Not everything

I hate the hoorah implied by ‘hand-picked’. I hate it more round about the fourth-plus week of repetitive vineyard work. At the worst of times in the vines, ‘bored’ is an understatement. But ‘hand-picked’ is a misrepresentation. Not everything is blockbuster work but everything is done by hand — and once you’ve completed one task, in a couple weeks you’ll be back at the same vine again.

Importers and sales people talk about the love and attention paid around harvest because they can sell the immediate result: the wine. But when, like a tick, you’re stuck headfirst into the flesh of it, your focus is the balancing act of coaxing vs controlling the vine.

Harvest isn’t even the most gratifying work. With everything happening at once there’s no time for that. With all the people, the drinking, the cleaning. The no sleeping. The sun, the stress. The late nights listening to the drip drip of the press. The logistics. More drinking. The lifting of zillions of caisse.

And yet harvest, shortened …