It’s time, my friends, the grapes are ripe for the pickin’!!! Or are they? Any farmer will tell you, there’s a fine line between any fruit or vegetable being underripe, ripe, or overripe. But in the wonderful world of wine, this decision can have an immense impact on the final product unlike most other crops at harvest time. This simple (not!) decision between the farmer and winemaker’s decision can magically transform the same varietal into wines only the experts can decipher as the same grape.
Let me explain…. Knowing you’re a loyal follower of my blog and have read every single post and watched every single episode of W.O.W., you have learned the magic formula for winemaking. Sugar gets exposed to yeast and turns to alcohol. Simple. Everyone get’s an A+ in wine chemistry! The reason creativity comes into play at harvest is the winemaker’s crazy, creative mind knows exactly how ripe, translate this to how much sugar content, he or she wants in the grapes at harvest.
Ripe for the pickin’ or the pickin’ is ripe?
While this may not seem as creative as the mind of an artist, author or musician, trust me, the end result is well worth buying into my position on creativity! Just ripe to ripe grapes at harvest will translate into wines where crisp, fresh fruit flavors and potentially bright acidity play the staring role. As there is a lower level of sugar in the grapes at earlier harvest, the resulting alcohol level will be fairly low as well.
On the other hand, later harvests can result in grapes with much higher sugar content resulting in jammier, riper fruit flavors and richer, higher alcohol wines. These wines will fill your mouth with juicier, fuller, riper flavors which create warmth and a linger longer in your mouth. Too much sugar can even result in residual sweetness as the yeast simply could not convert it all to alcohol!
Wine harvest stories run the gamut. Midnight harvests when the air is cooler to keep the grapes as fresh as possible. Multiple harvest over the same vineyard when not all the grape bunches ripen at the same time. Even waiting until grapes freeze on the vine to make the magical, mysterious Icewine when conditions are just right. The decision when to harvest truly requires creativity and the ability to know exactly what style wine a winemaker wants to produce to identify the perfect moment for grapes to begin their journey to the bottle.
Cheers! 🍷
#harvest #makewine #vineyard #creativity #winemaker #farmer #domsom.us
