Harvesting more than grapes

So there I was, in Tupungato, Mendoza, and proud owner of 900 kgs of Criollas hanging on their parrales. The problem facing Emi and me was how to get the grapes off the vine at the exact moment when the grapes were fully ripe, yet still had the crunchy acidity needed to make a delicious wine. We knew that moment was imminent and we also knew we would need a small cuadrilla of people to harvest by hand for a couple of hours. After a couple of nerve-wrecking days, we finally got the green light from the vineyard owner to go and harvest. The good news was the grapes would be perfectly ripe. The bad news was the harvest day was on a Sunday – our only free day that week.

Harvest brings a special kind of energy to a wine region. It is the moment when grape growers pick the literal fruit of their labor and the vines hand over the baton to the winemaker, who – in the span of a couple of weeks – turns all the grapes into wine. As soon as the first rays of sun hit the mountain tops, roads are buzzing with harvest teams on their way to the vineyards and the sound of presses, pumps and music in the bodegas continues long into the night. Many hands are needed to process the fruit, and a town as little as Tupungato fills with people from all over the world to help, to learn and to make wine friends. Two of them were badass women winemakers from Oregon who I shared a house with. Two of them were winemaking brothers from Ribera del Duero. One of them was a rookie (me).

The harvest energy is so strong that despite the long working hours, sleep is an afterthought. So when Emi proposed to go to an afterparty after a wine fair on Saturday night, we all said: “claro que si”. In the middle of nowhere, with vines all around us, a clear starry Andes sky above us and an Argentinian/Irish techno DJ collective before us, we formed a cuadrilla to go harvest the next day.
Three hours of sleep and three empanadas later, my housemates and I were on our way to the vineyard to meet the rest of our recently formed cuadrilla. Being among the vines and in the late summer sun seemed to resuscitate us all and in the span of a couple of hours, we harvested all the perfectly ripe bunches of Criollas we needed to make our wine.

Some winemakers believe that the energy harvest teams bring to the harvest is noticeable in the wine. So if you happen to taste extreme vibrancy, excited energy and a taste for life in NR1 and NR2, it is thanks to Emma, Rose, Edu, Rodri and Juli, our Tupungatino cuadrilla.