Robitussin?
Did I win something?
Because water, food coloring and sugar don’t cost that much?
Do they also stomp the grapes with dirty toe jammed feet?
I had long discussion a few years ago with a winemaker who told me he had picked half a vineyard by machine and half by hand as an experiment. After vinification, the machine picked juice was significantly better, so much so that at first they thought they had mixed up the bottles. He ultimately concluded that the machine picked grapes made it to the press so much faster that they were fresher and generated a better end product. I do not remember him discussing MOG.
So glad to have learned the term “MOG” from this thread. Can’t wait to drop that one in casual conversation at my next tasting.
I remember being at Ravenswood once in the 90s at harvest time where there were many bins of grapes waiting to be crushed where the grapes were cracking under the weight of the fruit and were spontaneously fermenting. There were swarms of bees, with a layer of dead bees that had plainly succumbed to the CO2 blanket on the surface. I can’t imagine those came out before fermentation.
![[winner.gif]](/uploads/db3686/original/2X/0/07ec25c9fd71159fe15d7f1ba5fad64e91238d0e.gif "winner"){kind=small}
This happens a lot, depending on the winery of course. But most are not taking the time to use small bins for their hand pickers, then cleaning the bins after each use. I know some producers in the Douro are doing this, but it really slows things down and adds quite a bit to the overall costs. It does make a better overall product as you don’t have issues of grapes starting to ferment before they even get dumped out of the container. And by cleaning the bins after each dump prevents other negative issues as well. But as I mentioned this is cost and time prohibitive for most larger wineries to do. So the only real solution is to machine harvest for the majority of larger wineries, at least for all but a small amount of their top end grapes anyways.
Native Advertising is just so f*ing annoying…
ugh…
somebody legislate this shit out please…
Jay,
Machine-picked outperforming hand-picked? Possible, I guess, but not likely. Machine harvesters harvest almost every grape, ripe, unripe, rotten. And they “harvest” a lot of other items as well. The machines go along and shake the vines which shake the berries off the stems. Naturally, other things fall into the gondola: leaves, petioles, animals….(a few years ago a cat came through the destemmer at a big winery in Marlborough!).
The other problem with machine-picking is that the grapes macerate for some length of time while all the grapes get picked, usually several gondolas per truckload, then have more maceration time in the truckbed until getting dumped at the winery. Hand-picked grapes get picked, sorted (in our case) go straight into a destemmer then into the press - on average, much less time on the skins, not to mention no unripe fruit, little MOG, etc.
Berry,
I’m surprised to hear that so much of Chablis is machine-picked!
Peter Rosback
Sineann
I’m surprised to hear that so much of Chablis is machine-picked!
It’s all about the terroir and the native flora and fauna is a big part of it. I’d be concerned if they brought in mice from Sardinia to throw into the bins though.
As far as machine harvesting however - hand picking and using small boxes makes the most sense intuitively. However, even if machine-picked, the grapes can still be hand-sorted, right? And if the machine picks a lot faster than things would be picked by hand, wouldn’t the grapes actually be fresher? That’s what some producers have told me. John’s description of Ravenswood is probably more likely though.
Still, if the grapes then go through a destemming machine, would that also remove some of the leaves and other things? I know that some producers in the Loire also use machines to harvest and some Bordeaux producers as well. My guess is that as labor costs increase, more people will be doing that.
Of course, maceration can also occur when your transporting manually picked grapes.
Does anyone know how wineries like Ridge (Paso Robles grapes), Edmunds St. John (El Dorado County grapes) and others address that when some of their vineyards are many hours’ drive from the winery? I assume their grapes are hand-harvested.
Edmunds St. John crushes the grapes in El Dorado I believe. Ridge trucks grapes from Paso Robles and Geyserville to Cupertino. I don’t know if they do anything special for transport.
Greg and John,
Maybe I can explain better…
As I mentioned, on average, grapes spend much less time macerating when hand-picked. Typically, few grapes are broken when hand harvested, therefore there is no juice to macerate in. Grapes are picked, transported to the winery in totes, sorted, go straight into a destemmer, then straight into a press - just about the minimal time possible for maceration.
Many, many grapes get broken when machine harvesting. A glance into the gondolas answers that. It looks like, well, grape soup - lots of berries floating in grape juice. There are machines that destem on the harvester. Still, many bits of things other than grapes get shaken into the mix and can’t be differentiated by a destemmer. These bits tend to be vegetative matter, though other surprises show up occasionally! Also, typically, it takes time to pick enough grapes to fill the transport truck, so usually a fair amount of time is spent macerating.
There are some new machines that harvest, destem and sort berries. There are not many out there and I’ve yet to hear reports on their efficacy.
Peter Rosback
Sineann
I have no independent knowledge of it and have never even seen a machine harvester, but that is the story I got from one winemaker. He sometimes posts here so I will ask him if he wants to join in on this issue.
Machine harvested fruit that I’ve seen looked like a soupy slurry of juice, grape matter, leaves, dirt, bugs, whatever. It’s a mess, but fine for cheap wine. If there are machines picking and keeping clusters intact, I’d love to see it. Even then, everything gets in there and the machine can definitely damage vines.
Handpicked fruit that’s trucked to a winery virtually always looks as good as it did leaving the vineyard. The real issue is keeping fruit cool if it has to travel. Juicing in the bins is rarely a significant issue. Slotted bins let juice run out the sides and bottom. But unless the fruit is mush coming off the vine, there’s no issue moving fruit as long as it’s covered and cool.
Why is Two Buck Chuck so cheap? If it cost $10, they’d have to change the name.
By the way, around here in Santa Fe, it is $4 buck Chuck. It is bad wine no matter what’s in it. The batch to batch variability is incredible. You would have no idea that you were drinking the same varietal or any varietal other than grape juice fermented. Where is it written that CA wines cannot add sugar. I have never seen that. Would they get bugs and an occasional dead something in their vats, probably, but that would likely improve the taste of this awful juice.
I have never seen it written that we cannot add sugar here but everyone acts as tho that is the law. Winemakers drive forty miles so nobody won t spot them buying bags of C and H, only to spot their neighbor in the next aisle. You can add concentrate (go figure!)and some people have their own grapes concentrated so the wine remains estate.
Everyone in the wine trade runs numbers on $2 Chuck. Once you account for bottles, closures, labels, packaging, trucking etc., there is not much left for wine. Trader Joe s cannot make more than $4 or $5 on a case, but it does bring lots of folks into the store. Their winery is incredibly efficient, acc to friends who have visited.
§24.177 Chaptalization (Brix adjustment).
In producing natural grape wine from juice having a low sugar content, pure dry sugar or concentrated grape juice may be added before or during fermentation to develop alcohol. In producing natural fruit wine from juice having a low sugar content, sugar, or concentrated juice of the same kind of fruit may be added before or during fermentation to develop alcohol. The quantity of sugar or concentrated juice added may not raise the original density of the juice above 25 degrees Brix. If grape juice or grape wine is ameliorated after chaptalization, the quantity of pure dry sugar added to juice for chaptalization will be included as ameliorating material. If fruit juice or fruit wine is ameliorated after chaptalization, pure dry sugar added under this section is not considered as ameliorating material. However, if fruit juice or fruit wine is ameliorated after chaptalization and liquid sugar or invert sugar syrup is used to chaptalize the fruit juice, the volume of water contained in the liquid sugar or invert sugar syrup will be included as ameliorating material.
(Sec. 201, Pub. L. 85-859, 72 Stat. 1385, as amended (26 U.S.C. 5382, 5384))