Harvest 2014 – Day 3

September 27th, 2014 | Harvest

 

Saturday! Traditionally our busiest day. As I mention every year, everyone loves to pick on Saturday, as the majority of our grape suppliers recruit their family and friends to help out in the vineyard, it’s not for any other more complicated reason. We started yet again, under blue skies and managed to get at least one press working early in the day. As the afternoon progressed so the flow of grapes increased, but with good organisation and fortunate timing we managed to stay on top of the situation. (I use the phrase timing because the secret is always to keep the presses loaded and working in a continuous cycle, before the incoming grapes have a chance to swamp our reception area).

Today’s brief video clip shows Fran loading the presses. It’s almost impossible to see on this clip as the fruit is pretty much a blur as it rains down into the press. Owning to the thoughtful design made by our founder Domingo Martin, our pressing room is located directly below the grape reception, and the fruit is simply emptied into a hopper on the floor above to fall by gravity almost directly into the press. In the video Fran is using a special wooden rake to distribute bunches evenly throughout the press (he is actually working on a platform built alongside the press, about six feet off the ground). The machine that you can see is actually the smaller of our two presses, and has a capacity of 3,500 kg when pressing whole bunches. Repeating last year’s decision, we are only using a very short, gentle pressing cycle to extract only the very best juice.

 

Saturday! Traditionally our busiest day. As I mention every year, everyone loves to pick on Saturday, as the majority of our grape suppliers recruit their family and friends to help out in the vineyard, it’s not for any other more complicated reason. We started yet again, under blue skies and managed to get at least one press working early in the day. As the afternoon progressed so the flow of grapes increased, but with good organisation and fortunate timing we managed to stay on top of the situation. (I use the phrase timing because the secret is always to keep the presses loaded and working in a continuous cycle, before the incoming grapes have a chance to swamp our reception area).

Today’s brief video clip shows Fran loading the presses. It’s almost impossible to see on this clip as the fruit is pretty much a blur as it rains down into the press. Owning to the thoughtful design made by our founder Domingo Martin, our pressing room is located directly below the grape reception, and the fruit is simply emptied into a hopper on the floor above to fall by gravity almost directly into the press. In the video Fran is using a special wooden rake to distribute bunches evenly throughout the press (he is actually working on a platform built alongside the press, about six feet off the ground). The machine that you can see is actually the smaller of our two presses, and has a capacity of 3,500 kg when pressing whole bunches. Repeating last year’s decision, we are only using a very short, gentle pressing cycle to extract only the very best juice.

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