Harvest grapes during wine season

“I was still finding my footing in the wine world when I first reached out to a winemaker about harvest work. With no real industry connections at the time, I sent a hopeful email to Bloomer Creek, a small winery in the Finger Lakes. It was already late August–around the time others began picking–so I felt lucky when Kim and Debra, the vigneron couple who’d run the estate for decades, invited me to stay at their farmhouse to help during a busy stretch in October. [...] One day in the vineyard while picking grapes with Debra, I noticed some clusters covered in botrytis, or “noble rot,” they allowed to be included into the wine for complexity. [...] That day, something clicked. It felt like my first small glimpse into the mysterious, alchemical transformation of fruit character into wine profile, and I suddenly became deeply desirous to seek out more connections like this.”

“During the 2010 Harvest I got to do something new this year. I helped pick some Botrytis grapes, also known as “Noble Rot” for the first time, which are Riesling grapes. [...] When we were all picking the grapes, everyone had their own bucket and we were only allowed to pick the really moldy and brown grapes. My father called this “selective picking”.”

“As someone who adores wine and works in the wine industry, it was so informative to watch a morning harvest seeing how the grapes are picked (all handpicked by the way), and all the magic that happens in the vineyards in the early morning (they start picking around midnight) and are done by 7am. I arrived around 5:15am or so to catch the last 2 hours of action.”