Introducing the 'Pinotage Busters'!

One week on and we're now over half way through the harvest. On Monday we tackled Block 31 (Chenin Blanc) with a team of only 18. (I'm reluctantly learning that Mondays are often a problem for local labour as many have champion hangovers to nurse!) Although this block deserves class 1 status, it was downgraded this year purely because our buyer could not afford all our chenin to be class 1. Looking on the positive side of things, without the downgrade, we'd have struggled to get the grapes delivered before 12noon, as is always required of class 1. So at least we had all day to pick!

The following day we got to pick the perfectly-fruity class 1 chenin, a .66Ha block, which - of course - the workers raced through in no time. We also had the expert help of two hawk-eye sweepers, Richard and Larisa, who'd flown all the way from the UK that weekend expressly to help us out with our harvest (... okay, okay - so they've actually come over to get married on neighbouring winefarm, Vrede en Lust ...but we like to think that they picked the wedding date
to suit us and the harvest!)

Today we stormed the Pinotage below our house... quite literally! The team arrived in good time and the first 4ton truck was full and fired up to go by 8am. The team continued to work like a whirlwind, inspite of the heat (high 30s today), and we pulled off an impressive 26tons by the close of day. Can you believe the team were still smiling at the end of it?! The berries also look (and taste) great, and there's very little sunburn on this block. With sugars averaging 25°, I can't wait to see what this tastes like in a bottle!