On Sunday, as we moved into the last few vineyards the sun was beating down on us, with the temperature hovering around 30°C (86°F). To be honest it was quite a slow day, with just a little racking in the morning, and then waiting for pallets of grapes to arrive in the afternoon. In the cellar there is a lot of waiting involved, but regrettably we don’t have too much choice. Our objective is simply to get all the grapes in so that we can do a final count, and know exactly how many kilos we will have in order that we can calculate the final number of tanks that we will need, and how best the must can be distributed between them. It’s not quite as simple as it sounds.

Lunch at harvest time is a very serious business. Our picking team usually stop for between an hour or an hour and a half for lunch, during which time (on very hot days) they try to find somewhere cool to eat – in the case of today’s photo, under a tree. As you can see they are also very resourceful, building a makeshift table out of harvest cases and a couple of plastic pallets. Unfortunately, the sommelier was just out of shot when I took the picture!