The Green Harvest is not well known for most wine drinkers so let’s dive in.

It’s the early summer and look at you go! Your vineyard is looking strong and healthy, the weather has been perfect and your grapes are off to a fast start. So much so, that the birds have been gathering, watching… waiting…. wishing…

They may even be scaring you a little, as you know it’s only a matter of time before they descend on your finest crop yet.

As frightening as that is, you have bigger issues at the moment.

It’s that time of year, around the first week of August, and Veraison (when grapes first start ripening) is about to set in.

Before Veraison, the grapes are still green and it’s time to harvest…..

Why would you want to harvest unripe grapes you ask?

Great question, unfortunately, it’s to limit the production of each vine to only select grape bunches. Sadly, the Green Harvest does not result in any wine.

The Green Harvest is a mid-season activity where you remove the grapes that don’t look good enough to keep for the final harvest.

This is true survival of the fittest, but who will make the cut?

There are a few things to consider when picking the grapes that will eventually make your fine wine. As a winemaker, the aim throughout the season is to achieve beautiful healthy and concentrated grapes.

This might be the opposite of what you would expect. Most people think you want as many grapes from each vine as possible.

However, for wine, you get only the best and the best is not watered down grapes. You want all of the vines nutrients, sugars and flavours pouring into a few grape bunches.

As you harvest the green grapes, the main things to consider are:

• Canopy Management
• Clustering
• Size

Managing the Green Harvest

On to the bunches! So while we are out in the field crying as we cut these lovely grapes to the ground, we need to remember to count how many bunches are on each vine.

Even though all the bunches might look good, if there are too many, this will dilute the concentration in your final crop. Diluted grapes lead to sorry wine.

Cutting the grapes to the ground is just fine. It doesn’t look very good, but it’s a nice way to give back to the soil by composting this green harvest.

The next thing to consider is the location of the bunches on the vines.

When managing your grapes through the season, you want the best canopy growth possible to ensure there is enough sugar production for your grapes.

However, you also need to avoid shading the grapes because this can cause a bitter flavour to develop in your final product.

The goal is to pick grapes in the best spot to encourage canopy growth, but without sacrificing sun on the grapes.

Lastly, we want to keep the best looking bunches.

We’ll have to make some tough decisions out there, but that’s it’s worth it for the final wine. Keeping the healthiest and best bunches will result in a much better wine and less vine maintenance.

Now for the tricky part. When do we “green harvest”? Is it too early? Can you be too early?

No one envy’s you here. This is a tough decision and timing is critical. If you start too early, the vine may sense that it has lost a lot of fruit and as such, the vine may shut down production altogether.

This can leave you in a tough spot for the year.

However, if you start too late, the grapes start to consume the valuable sugars and nutrients which should go to the final crop.

An easy rule of thumb for the best time to green harvest is around “veraison”. If you see any colour change out in the vineyard, it’s time to start the green harvest.

Leaving only the best for vintage 🙂