The White Knight in the Vineyard: 2024 Grape Harvest
We know this from classic fairy tales: when you get into dire straits, the white knight comes galloping up and saves you from certain doom. We winemakers have a "white knight" like that too, only his horse drinks diesel.
This year we desperately needed him, our knight, because the weather behaved like the proverbial dragon: In the summer it blew a lot of humidity into our land, so that our arch enemies, powdery mildew and downy mildew, could roll happily across our vineyards. In order to save the harvest at all, we had to apply almost twice as much pesticide in 2024 as in a normal year.
On September 4th, we began the grape harvest with a slight weakness - and on September 8th, the weather changed. It became bitterly cold and wet, so that the rot rate rose from 3% to 40% within 4 days of continuous rain!
This was the beginning of the winemaker's thriller, the race against time. Every day counted, because every hour more grapes fell victim to the mold. Our harvest team, consisting of 10 people, was in the vineyard all day to carry out the so-called "negative harvest," i.e. to cut out the rotten grapes. It was hard work under the most unpleasant conditions, a truly great achievement!
And so the time had come for our white knight: It is called a Pellenc grape harvester and is a harvesting machine of the latest generation. We normally harvest around 40 to 50% of our vineyards mechanically. This year, while the mold dragon blew cold air down our necks, we had to work under pressure. Thank God we had already organized the white knight, one of the best there is currently. So we were able to work against the clock and harvest around 70% mechanically in no time.
And now the moment has come to get a little enthusiastic. The Pellenc grape harvester is not a conventional harvesting machine, but a sophisticated, compact wonder that really impressed us.
Do you actually know how a harvesting machine works? It is built like a square bridge on wheels. You simply drive it over the entire row of vines, that is, the harvesting machine "swallows" the entire vine, rushes over it, shakes it vigorously to loosen the grapes and then leaves the vine behind. The vine probably feels a bit like Jonah in the belly of a whale during the procedure and is happy when it is spat out at the other end. And now you also know why vineyards are always laid out so precisely and accurately.
A used Ritter costs around 150,000 euros, and a new one can be bought for around 300,000 euros. That's not worth it for our 16-hectare vineyard, which is only used for a few weeks a year. That's why winegrowers join forces or book their machines through a contract company. Our Pellenc grape harvester was a real stroke of luck: the owner's son was trained as an apprentice at our vineyard a few years ago, and so we were able to borrow this technical masterpiece, including the driver, for the harvest this year. :-)
Unlike a clunky combine harvester, our white knight has a more graceful figure. You could almost call him a gazelle, because he is ideally adapted to his terrain: With narrow, extendable legs that can compensate for uneven terrain, he whizzes through the steep vineyards in a way that is a joy. And almost invisibly inside him, exciting processes take place:
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The grape harvester shakes the grapes from the vine
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They fall onto the conveyor belt
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They are mechanically separated from the stem (that is, the stalk structure). This process is therefore called "de-stemming".
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The grapes then fall onto the sorting table. This consists of several rollers with gaps between them, through which the heavy, healthy grapes can fall one level lower. Everything that is lighter (such as leaves, small branches, crushed and unhealthy grapes) is immediately transported away via the sorting table and immediately falls back to the ground. This is a purely mechanical sorting system that only works because the floating sorting table always automatically aligns itself flat on the slope.
The result is a huge difference to other machines, and as I said, this year the grape harvester was our salvation. Only our premium wines , such as our single-vineyard Rieslings from our very steep vineyards, are still harvested 100% by hand.
Photo: Hand-picking of our dry Schiefer Riesling from the Burrweiler Altenforst vineyard
In summary, the 2024 harvest yielded around 25% less than an average year. BUT: What we have achieved through painstaking detail work is a great quality of grapes. The grapes are now fermenting and our wine cellar already smells wonderful.
Now let’s sit back and take a breather in delicious anticipation.
Your slightly exhausted but rescued counts
PS There are princesses who get by without knights. Our Piwi grape variety Cabernet Blanc (more on that here) was harvested very easily, even without pre-selection. We had no yield losses at all, it's just so much fun!
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