Crates, picking bins, snips, PMS, liners, labels, truck, forklift, netting off - yes, now we are ready for the pickers. We took the Pinot Gris off first, and we had the United Nations come to do it. Pamma (Indian) runs the gang, so we had a couple of indians, four chinese guys two of them with the surname Lee and three guys from South America - unfortunately one spoke Portugese and the other two Spanish, so I heard them talking in French! (I must get my French up to scratch before we leave.)
Unfortunately I had asked Pamma for 15 pickers but he only sent 9, so we spent quite a bit of time picking, and as a consequence we missed the early truck and the grapes didn't arrive at Sileni until 11.30pm, so they were all a bit cross down there. It was fortunate that we were doing a hand pick as a result of the last lot of rain the previous weekend, sour rot had set in and we lost about 1 tonne of fruit. Mainly it just fell off, but you could tell which bunches were affected as they were quite warm. We all ended up very sticky.
Next week it will be the gewurz by hand and maybe a machine pick of clone 15 chardonnay. Tiring days for an old codger like me!
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