It seems like the sun might be with us all week, another really hot day. Harvest is always a physically demanding time of year, but when the temperature is high it can be especially draining for everyone.

For most of the day things went quite smoothly, as they have for most of the week, but by the end of this long day, a few things started to go wrong. A puncture to one of our tractors was the first sign of trouble, but unfortunately worse was still to come. As  the last few grapes of the day were being unloaded, one of our cellar team twisted awkwardly, and dislocated his knee completely! What a horror! An ambulance was quickly called and within the hour the unfortunate victim was whisked off to hospital.

I think that yesterday, by saying that it had been “uneventful”, was probably tempting fate. The last problem of this forgettable day occurred during the night, and wasn’t discovered until the morning. A fuse on our refrigeration machine blew obviously meaning that the temperature control of our tanks was lost. However, when the tanks are already very cold, and the control is off for a few hours, the tank temperature only changes very slowly, and so the effect is not disasterous.