Now comes the Green Harvest!

One of our most labour-intensive tasks on the vineyard-calendar is the
'green harvest,' when we are thinning-out the crop.

Here the number of clusters on the vine is reduced-depending on the variety,
this can amount to half of what's hanging.
The process serves to intensify all organic materials and constituent
elements in the clusters remaining.
We find it particularly essential with the red wines, in order to achieve
optimum ripening of the grapes year after year.

The vine will normally develop two and even three clusters on each shoot.
The top cluster is always a couple days behind in its development, and so we
remove it.
Also, it would be receiving less sunshine, so the evolution of tannins and
development of colouring agents would be retarded.

The green harvest actually requires more effort than picking the grapes in
autumn does.
But then, this thinning-out makes the harvest to follow easier, since there
are not so many bunches left to pick and the grapes are more evenly ripened.

So we can often avoid having to make an overly rigorous selection in the
vineyards-
and ultimately, it's easier to get our hands on the clusters, since they all
will now be hanging in plain sight at the lower end of the leaf-canopy.

www.kollwentz.at