Harvest pt I

I was torn between a photo of only the crate of pretty grapes or the entire harvest, and then I realised that's what thumbnails are for. The pretty ones are from one white Syrah vine on the big pergola, everything else is from the vineyard.

The big pergola is used for shade as well as produce and so not as many leaves are removed from the plants which means that the fruit is slower to ripen. In the vineyard more leaves are removed and so the fruit ripens more quickly. The vineyard is more prone to rat attack. We have decided to split this year's harvest into two batches; first the vineyard because it is ready and if we don't rescue it right now we will lose it all to rats and wasps. Later we will harvest the big pergola which is a little behind. There was a risk we wouldn't have fitted it all into the barrel in one go anyway.

Now that these have been lightly minced and put into the barrel complete with stalks we think we may have about 50litres. The second harvest we think will be a little larger. The dust on the grapes is the natural yeast, which we don't wash off, but we do add a sachet of dried wine-making yeast from a home-brewing company just to make sure we don't end up with anything too rustic.

At a later stage the two batches will be combined.