Grape harvest 2022 has began!

The most awaited time of the year for any winery coincides, without a doubt, with the start of the grape harvest. The weeks leading up to it are weeks of nerves, of looking to the sky to make sure there is no abundant rain and of checking a multitude of factors to make sure that everything is going to go as it should.

The smell of the vineyards is even different. The abundant vegetation and the already ripe bunches of grapes impregnate everything with a special moment that is unique every year.

The veraison, the starting point

In Jumilla, everything begins to change with the arrival of spring and the flowering of the vineyards. The first shoots heal their wounds from pruning and flowering precedes the really important moment that gives the starting point of the harvest, the veraison.

Veraison is the moment when the greenish berries, which will become grapes, change their color from vegetal green to red or purple tones for the red varieties, and golden for the white varieties. The grape begins to undergo a series of transformations in which the acids in the berries begin to diminish, the grape seed begins to ripen, the colors characteristic of photosynthesis disappear and the levels of glucose, fructose and polyphenols begin to appear, at the same time we begin to perceive the concentration of certain aromas characteristic of the must and we lose the herbaceous smells characteristic of the plant.

Searching grape maturity

From that moment on, the calculation of the harvest date is approximately 25-35 days. The chemical evolution of the berries is accelerated and we work continuously to obtain the desired balance between sugars and the grape’s own acids. Its qualitative state, its sanitary state and of course, the indispensable intuition and experience of our team and our winemaker, which determines what marks the moment.

It is perhaps this balance between the most modern chemical techniques to be able to know the state of the grape and the experience of the farmer, the winegrower and the winemaker that “the moment has arrived”. That intuition that makes the creation of wine something magical and the harvest, undoubtedly, its first and essential step.

The harvest at Bodegas Luzón

Of course, in our winery not everything is harvested at the same time, since the weather, the different varieties or their geographical location will mark an oscillation between the days. The white varieties are usually the first to be harvested, starting just in these days the harvest of the Merseguera that we work for Tomás Ferro, the wine created in collaboration with the Polytechnic University of Cartagena and that, due to its location further south, are already ready to be harvested.

In the case of our Monastrell, the harvest will still take a few days, but everything is ready. We must distribute the work throughout the different estates we manage, pampering and taking care of each one of them.

Once in the vineyard, we cut the bunches by hand, placing them either on pallets of about 150kg each, or in boxes of no more than 15-20kg.

After that moment, they are transported from each of the places where we harvest the grapes to the winery where they spend 24 hours in a cold room to stabilize their temperature and then the grapes are selected and the winemaking process begins, although that is another story that, if you like, we will tell you later.