Harvest
is usually around late February, early March, when the Baume (sugar)
levels have reached around 13.5 to 14.0
This is
when the winemaker expects the fruit to be at its best eg: colour and
flavours.
We use a contract harvester from Robinvale (O'Connor harvesting) they
use a self propelled New holland harvester.
It takes about three minutes to strip one row of vines that would normally take
hand pickers three days!
This method of harvesting causes no damage to the fruit, but saves so much
time. To the right is a bunch after stripping which shows the vine
undamaged as well.
Harvesting at night allows the fruit to be picked in the cool so that the fruit
arrives at the winery in a fresh, cool condition.
The grapes are transported from the harvester into one-ton bins.
The bins
are then loaded onto a truck and transported to Dominion wines, our winemakers
situated at Avenal, Victoria.