The Grape Harvest 2014
Throughout the year, our vineyard was put to the test by the severe weather conditions of spring and summer. After a few days of sun, there was a chain of persistent rains, thunderstorms, and generally low temperatures and high humidity.
This has forced us to diligently work in our vineyard in order to obtainan acceptable final results. We have two types of vines: Merlot (red wine) and Verduzzo (white wine). After much loving care came the long-awaited moment, the harvest.
Early in the morning we and our friends arranged to meet in the vineyard. Everything was ready to begin the harvest, the cart was prepared, the buckets lined up to be filled with grapes. Shortly after they arrived we started, first we collected Merlot then Verduzzo.
The grapes of Merlot. They have a beautiful color and they are ripe. The berries are large and full of juice, and very sweet to taste. Here I am with some friends at work while harvesting Merlot. Even if it was early in the morning, you could feel the warmth of the sun. The cart is slowly filling with grapes.
After an hour the Merlot is all loaded on the cart. We then moved to collect Verduzzo. After about another hour, we finished and returned home with the entire harvest.
The harvest is over
The cart full of grapes of Merlot and Verduzzo, ready to be squeezed.
Yet another day of duty for the glorious Fiat 411R, which despite its 51 years of hard work did the job without difficulties.
Noon arrived, so with our friends we got to the table for refreshments and a good drink of wine from the previous year.
For us, the harvest day is mainly a moment of communion between friends, to chat and discuss various things in freedom. In the afternoon we squeezed the grapes, using the crusher device of our friend Carlo. Mercede feeding grapes to the crusher, using a special fork with a lot of dents.
The cellar is ready with a press to squeeze the crushed grapes, and the stainless steel containers to be filled with the grape juice.
The vat is almost full of must Merlot, we have got about 470 liters. Verduzzo vines produced 350 liters. The results of the wine analysis were: Merlot 12.7 percent alcohol; Verduzzo 13 percent alcohol
The beautiful color of our must. Now it will have to rest till March, except for some decanting to separate the wine from the scrap. After that, the wine will be filtered through special cardboard filters for the final cleaning.
Villa Ottelio