The scenery of vineyards in harvest time 가을에는 와인이 영글어갑니다

Photos by Chun Eun Sue

The vineyard in harvest time is most green and plentiful. In this period after the peak of summer sunshine, all vineyards start breathing. When you walk around the vineyards, you can feel full of energy of soil.

The farmers are getting busy of course. More you enjoy wines, you more see ‘vintage’ on the bottle. This vintage is all about farming. Vintage is the year of harvesting grapes concurrently the year of making wines. As wine is not a manufactured good from the automatic product line, it’s not in doubt that new grapes grow every year and each vintage brings a very distinct difference of wines. Fine wine is rightly great result of the farming all the year over.

Obviously fall is most season of harvest, even starting from late in summer. A bunch of people rushes to petit villages in French wine regions, who needs to earn money on picking grapes. Small village is crowded with foreigners from Rumania, Poland and so on, but not with French people. In Bourgogne, buses are also lots of foreign passengers in this season, only one bus per hour though.

Using machine for harvest is common in huge vineyards of wide region, however, in little ones they only use their hands for picking. Besides, many of notable winemakers also persist to work by hands for better quality. The vines are not tall, much shorter than your height, so you have to bend at the waist to pick grapes. Even young university students who expect to earn their school fees get exhausted after work. Thus, in the dinner table there are always glasses of wine for relieving their fatigue.

The pleasant weather in spring and summer is required to farm, but the most significant factor is the perfect weather during harvest. In particular, grape is the fruit which starts to be oxidized right after picked. That’s way farmers speed up to carry grapes to their winery, and straightly starts wine making without any damage of grape. Of course, if it rains in harvesting days, grapes will be rapidly oxidized. And it negatively affects taste of wine for sure.

After having good harvest for 2 days, it started raining. Unfortunately hail was also falling. Now farm owners are not happy worrying a lot while workers are lucky getting money without work. The poor weather continued for 3 days, after that one farm enforced harvesting. The other farmer said for that. “Picking in this raining day is not right way even if you’re loosing money.” Harvest is the completed achievement of long journey with year of hard work and all efforts by farmer’s hands.

Now people in vineyards might have full picking in this beautiful fall. I couldn’t help wonder again how harvest is going this year, 2014.

 

 

 

Contributor, Chun Eun Sue

Wine expert, Chun Eun Sue had worked in Korea best wine magazine as a senior marketing & international manager. Now she is working in the leading wine company in Korea. CultureM Magazine releases her wine & travel essay once a month.

와인 전문가 전은수씨는 국내 최고의 와인매거진에서 국, 내외 와인 마케팅을 담당했으며 현재 국내 와인회사에서 마케팅 및 홍보를 담당하고 있다. 해외 유명 와인산지를 직접 답사한 그녀의 생생한 이야기를 컬쳐엠매거진에서 공개한다.