Grape to Glass : The Growing Season
While the fall harvest is certainly a busy time of year for California’s wine-grape growers, winegrowing is a year round process. Each season, growers have specific sets of practices and maintenance they must carry out in the vineyards to ensure the highest quality grapes possible.
Photo credit: Russian River Valley (Warren H.W. White)
Did you know?
A ton of grapes can yield approximately 720 bottles of wine, depending on the amount of juice in the grapes.
Fall
Fall means harvest time for California’s wine-grape growers, and countless hours are spent in the vineyard. The vines bear grape clusters that are so juicy and ripe they hang heavily off the vines.
At this time of the year, growers and winemakers test the sugar, acid and pH levels as well as the flavor of the grapes weekly, sometimes daily, to determine the optimal time to harvest. This is one of the most crucial decisions growers and winemakers make all year, because the right balance of sugar, acid, and pH along with grape flavor development makes a profound difference in the flavor and quality of the resulting wine.
When it’s time to pick, vineyards are harvested quickly so that the grapes don’t over ripen, and the perfect clusters are immediately ushered off to the wineries that will turn them into wine.
