As you may already be aware, all of our fruit is picked by hand (the pergola system of vine training does not allow machine harvest), and gathered in small baskets of around 18-20kg (40lbs). The cases are open, well ventilated and chosen specifically to avoid fruit being prematurely crushed and preventing any possible fruit oxidation.

Over the years many cases have been lost or broken, sometimes causing a bottleneck in fruit collection as grape suppliers have to wait for cases to be emptied and re-cycled. This year we added 1,000 new cases to prevent any delay in delivering our fruit from vineyard to press as quickly as possible.

Although they are washed and re-cycled during the picking period, at the end of every campaign they still need to be thoroughly cleaned using our pressure washing machines, and then stored in our grape reception until they are required again next year. In common with the grape reception itself they are only used once a year for a period of about one week. In the meantime they simply form a part of our very own case mountain….