So the time has come, we've been at Grusson for 4 years and this is our first attempt! Woo hoo! I had volunteered to try and get a method and process together (foolish, foolish girl) so I was the "Vigneronne de Grusson" (all learning from a great book by Cox, and the internet (God bless the internet)). We all had team t-shirts.
Buying the equipment - perhaps I won't go there - suffice to say I dispatched Steve and Karen into the vineyard and asked them to estimate the weight of grapes so I could work out what equipment to buy - their estimate? 150 lbs (more of which later).
The day dawned a lovely sunny day. Steve and Karen went off to do some errands whilst Norman, Brian and I cleaned the winery (yes well one of the outhouses anyway). According to Brian the funniest moment was when a swallow nest landed on my head and tipped its contents down my t-shirt!
We started picking at about 11am, three people picking, two de-stemming in the winery (do we really need to de-stem Amanda??) Oh yes, very quickly became obvious that the critical path was the de-stemming, and that I had only just got enough of the right equipment and containers to cope!
In the end it was Brian who did most of the picking whilst the rest of us variously Skyped (yes we do do UK equalta work whilst in France!), de-stemmed, went to the airport to get Ian and cooked the dinner. The last grapes were picked by Ian at about 7pm and put into the pile with their stems (you need 10% stems apparently for the tannin). Weight of grapes? From the vineyard which is what they were estimating - 130lbs (class eh!) and the total which included all the vines around the house 163lbs.
Time for dinner but the day was not over yet - we needed to crush before the night was out!
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