I seem to spend my time moaning about inaccurate weather forecasts, and day 4 of this year’s harvest only served to illustrate my feelings perfectly. As we went to bed on day 3 the sky was clear and predictions for the following day indicated a fine day with the chance of rain increasing towards the evening. No problem. The following morning I opened the shutters, and within half an hour the drizzle had started! Fortunately this fine rain was not heavy and did not last for too long, but still long enough to leave the canopy damp (although the fruit itself remained perfectly dry). Of course we cannot work with any water present, and so our start to the day was delayed until lunch time.

Thankfully some warm sunshine and a fresh breeze soon had the desired effect, and picking was resumed. Again it was a game of catch up, as we tried to take advantage of the dry spell, and once again our pickers swarmed like locusts over our ‘Bodega’ vineyard. As they did I was thrilled to discover that I had a supporter (well, there had to be one somewhere), a very attractive young lady sporting a t-shirt with my name on it. Naturally, I grabbed my camera, but only to photograph the t-shirt I hasten to add…..

By the end of the day we had somehow managed, miraculously, to gather pretty much the same quantity of grapes that we would expect on a full working day. (I should add that grapes were arriving from growers vineyards too). At one brief point during the evening our grape reception was almost swamped, but at least we managed to get every grape inside before the rain returned once again. It was then simply down to our pressing team to do their stuff during the night.

I seem to spend my time moaning about inaccurate weather forecasts, and day 4 of this year’s harvest only served to illustrate my feelings perfectly. As we went to bed on day 3 the sky was clear and predictions for the following day indicated a fine day with the chance of rain increasing towards the evening. No problem. The following morning I opened the shutters, and within half an hour the drizzle had started! Fortunately this fine rain was not heavy and did not last for too long, but still long enough to leave the canopy damp (although the fruit itself remained perfectly dry). Of course we cannot work with any water present, and so our start to the day was delayed until lunch time.

Thankfully some warm sunshine and a fresh breeze soon had the desired effect, and picking was resumed. Again it was a game of catch up, as we tried to take advantage of the dry spell, and once again our pickers swarmed like locusts over our ‘Bodega’ vineyard. As they did I was thrilled to discover that I had a supporter (well, there had to be one somewhere), a very attractive young lady sporting a t-shirt with my name on it. Naturally, I grabbed my camera, but only to photograph the t-shirt I hasten to add…..

By the end of the day we had somehow managed, miraculously, to gather pretty much the same quantity of grapes that we would expect on a full working day. (I should add that grapes were arriving from growers vineyards too). At one brief point during the evening our grape reception was almost swamped, but at least we managed to get every grape inside before the rain returned once again. It was then simply down to our pressing team to do their stuff during the night.