Bob did it again.

Bob Hughes, Charlottesville's Superstar Realtor, was my guest harvest-helper today. Bob has worked on bottling days in the winery several times as have many friends. This, however, was Bob's second day helping harvest inthe vineyard of this still young 2006 crush (period of time when grapes are picked and made into wine). In fact he picked 16 lugs of riesling himself. That's a tough grape to start out on and a respectable quantity. Further, he now has my proprietary Lug Retrieval System (LRS) down pat. I drive the tractor down the rows with a hydraulic lift platform on the back. Bob walks behind picking up lugs, stacking them in 6 columns, 6 high until we get a half ton of fruit. Guess who has the hard job? The fully loaded platform is driven to an elevated cold room. We then slide individual stacks of six lugs into the cold room by using a proprietary tool, The Lugger. The Lugger is basically a modified hook on a stick with a D-handle on the end. The slider just puts the hook under the lip of the lowest lug in the stack, lifts up slightly and backs in the desired direction. Sounds silly, but it works and it's a lot better and faster than restacking 1000# of grapes everytime you put them in cold storage.

The cold room is an important tool for a vineyard. By cooling down the grapes you slow enzymatic degradation. Basically, the fruit stays sound longer. Also chilling leads to clearer juice at the press and better clarifying after the juice is in a settling tank. Chilling can buy a day or two at the outside before processing the fruit is necessary. This isn't much but it does lend some flexibility. We made our cold room from an old shipping container. It looks like a semi-trailer without wheels. I insulated it myself and had a local refrigeration company put in a "reefer" unit. When I was starting out I'll admit I was taken aback when other growers asked if I had a reefer.

The crew picked two tons today. Thankfully Daniel and Josefina stayed after the picking to wash lugs. We'll be ready for the next picking day which I think will be next Tuesday. In addition to picking up the two tons, Bob and I delivered grapes to two different wineries. Plus we picked up new wine glasses at nearby Veritas Winery. The glasses had to be delivered there because I was off making deliveries and I had the keys to fork lift. Veritas unloaded them and then loaded up my truck using their fork lift. Thanks Veritas (www.veritaswines.com)! It is great to have friendly and helpful neighbors.

Tomorrow I need to concentrate on some winemaking, walk through some vineyard blocks, and take some berry samples to determine where we are now.