Inside Look: Night Harvest

Many wineries talk about harvesting grapes at night, but it’s a scene that very few people actually witness…in part because it happens in the middle of the night. We were curious about this mysterious process, so we recently got a chance to talk to Firestone Winemaker, Kevin Willenborg about some of the specifics. He even shared some snapshots from a recent round of night picking at the estate, so here’s your insider sneak peek…

Crews usually start picking at around 3:30am to the light of tractor-mounted flood lights and individual head lamps (like a team of fire flies from a distance). Picking in the dark takes advantage of the cool nighttime temperatures usually hovering at around 55 degrees, then continues toward mid-morning before the day warms up. Crews use one trusty tool to get the job done: vineyard clippers, like spring-loaded, durable, sharp scissors. Right after clipping cluster from vine, the fruit is dropped into small buckets, rushed back down the row and dumped into half-ton bins on a tractor. At that point, sorting begins, under the light of head lamps. The vineyard foreman leads sorting, to pick out any “MOG” (vineyard slang for material other than grapes) left with the clusters. MOG can be anything from stray leaves to unsound fruit that was left behind. After clipping and sorting, the bins are ready to roll back to their final destination: the cellar. They travel very slowly in their half-ton bins, pulled by a tractor back to the winery. First class travel, all the way! The distance is less than three minutes from vineyard block to crushpad...definitely destined for greatness.