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Montepulciano Harvest 2018

Yay – Montepulciano Harvest 2018 has begun!!! It is so nice to be harvesting the red varieties!

Getting Ready

To start out, we have to unload the empty bins from the refrigerated semi-truck. The tractor, with the forks on it, picks them up out of the truck and then just sets them down, out of the way and they wait to be filled.

This particular morning was very foggy, making it a neat change from our usual sunny mornings!

Montepulciano Harvest 2018 - Unloading the Refrigerated semi-truck

 Filling the Bins

At last, the Montepulciano is heading into the bins!  We also have a new dump buggy director, Silas, and he is doing an amazing job!

We normally have a couple of people on the ground around the bins to help scoop up any grapes that bounced out of the bins. Usually, there are not very many grapes that make it out of the bins!

Montepulciano Harvest 2018 - Dumping Grapes into bins

The fog was fun while it lasted but it is nice to be able to see the whole vineyard! These bins are stacked three high to make it easier to dump into and hey, it looks pretty cool!

The blue bin connectors on the top of the bins, are to stop the juice from running down the sides of the bins while they are being filled. As soon as they are full and the dump buggy is finished dumping, the connectors are removed and the bins are ready to go into the refrigerated semi-truck!

Montepulciano Harvest 2018 - Dumping Grapes into Bins

Loading the Refrigerated Semi-Truck

It’s fun to see the bins being loaded into the refrigerated semi-truck. As you can see, the truck is almost full – that is a really nice sight! A full truck can hold 20 tons of fruit so that’s really exciting!

Everyone likes to watch the whole process even the two year old! He especially likes to eat the grapes!

Montepulciano Harvest 2018 - Loading Full Bins onto Refrigerated Truck

And just like that, we are done with Montepulciano harvest for 2018 but we’ll be harvesting again before too long!

For more vineyard and harvest posts, check out the links below!

Grape Harvest 2016

Grape Harvest 2015

Veraison and Cluster Counts = Ripening Grapes!

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