Winegrape Harvest

We were offered a wonderful opportunity to harvest winegrapes at a local organic winery. Dave signed up our group for the afternoon. As you can see, Dave and Laurie are thoroughly enjoying themselves!







Yarnie



Kim with Raphael's mom in the background




Ana and Kari



Joel

Here are two of the local workers keeping an eye on us.


After picking the grapes, we went back to the winery to help process the grapes. People loaded the crates of grapes onto the conveyor belt, and the stems were spat out the end, the grapes pumped over to a press machine. The grape skins are bagged up for processing into Grappa. The juice is pumped into a cooling tank to settle overnight, then it's purified and cleanded before entering the fermentation tanks. We were given tastes of some of the different wines 20 days into fermentation.



After fermentation, the wine is put into barrels for at least 6 months.



Here Dave is relaxing after a hard day's work. The farm also produces olive oil and honey. They have an Agritourismi here, which means that they are a combination working farm, hotel, and restaurant facility. We ended up buying two cases of wine for the house to share at dinner, and some olive oil. I could definitely get into this kind of lifestyle.