After five days of almost non-stop action the final day is nearly always a bit of an anti-climax. There is still fruit that needs to be collected, but it tends to arrive piecemeal rather than in a steady flow. At the end of the last working day (as I have explained in previous vintages), we need to wait until the final bunches arrive before we can load the final presses. All presses have a minimum and maximum capacity, and so it is essential to calculate the final loads to ensure that we don’t have any odd kilos left over and also that there are enough grapes to press. (In an emergency I guess that we could always take our shoes and socks off and find an empty bathtub!)

One thing that has become quite clear from this year’s campaign is that we are working faster and more efficiently than ever. More transport, more people, our only limitations these days tend to be the capacity of the building and the key equipment (presses, tanks etc) Whilst we still have a little spare capacity, whereby we could simply harvest over a longer period, there are still many variables that we have to take into consideration – yields being just one such example. We never really know the actual yields (and therefore tank capacity required), until our first pressings are complete.

The other very notable feature of this year’s harvest, apart from the really fine quality, was also the fact that it was very uneventful – no major breakdowns or failures. (I deliberately did not make that comment until the harvest was complete)

Today’s short video shows the last few cases of grapes being offloaded and palletised, with a brief guest appearance by Angela as she collected the final grape samples for analysis.