What is the harvest? When is it done? How to do it?

Find out together with Grifo Marchetti! When the grapes grown during the year are harvested and brought to the vineyard to begin the winemaking process, we have the harvest. This moment has always been in the hearts of Italians thanks to its charm and traditions.
If you want to get a quality wine it is essential to start from a good base of grapes that are up to the product you want to obtain. What do we mean by quality grapes? First of all, it must be intact and free from defects and molds then it must reach the right level of maturation before being harvested during the harvest.
So when is the harvest done? When the grapes are ripe, and depending on the type of wine we want to produce, the parameters vary… but in general usually the harvest takes place in the period of September!
In addition, usually the grapes that are harvested to produce sparkling wines are harvested earlier, while those used to produce wine with a higher alcohol content are harvested later. And now let’s answer the third question … how is the harvest done?
There are mainly two different types: the natural harvest and the mechanized one.
The natural harvest, as the name implies, is that of tradition, the one that is made by man, the one that the Grifo Marchetti team prefers. During this harvest the bunches of grapes are cut and placed inside baskets of up to 15-20 kg. During this phase the man who is carrying out this activity, checks that the grapes are intact and without defects in order to avoid damaging the wine.
Usually this type of harvest takes place in small farms and sloping land. The mechanized harvest is carried out by machine in the cellars where the land is flat and vast.
Usually the machines used through the shaking of the plant drop the bunches of grapes in special receiving devices and then they are transported through conveyor belts to a storage point where the grapes are divided and selected either manually or automatically. For the automatic selection you can use our destemmers they will make a selection of the grapes of the grapes selecting only the best and eliminating the imperfect ones, in this way you will get a better wine.