Last of the summer wine

Much as we love the tourists here (oh yes we do!), there is always a slightly euphoric feeling at the end of the season when you can actually drive from A to B without following enormous camper vans with paddle boards and bicycles strapped to the back or GB registered saloon cars with straw hats and a copy of The Times on the back parcel shelf.  The pleasure of driving on clear roads last for just a few days as then it is harvest-time for the vineyards.

This season I’ve noticed more and more of the big industrial machines and I’m not entirely sure this is A Good Thing.   Being an expert on the subject of grape-picking (having once helped our neighbour) I remember how careful we had to be with the secateurs; to support the bunch at the bottom as we cut the stem, not to fling them into the bucket, and to avoid getting too many leaves in.  It seems obvious that using a machine that travels over the vines and shakes the grapes (and goodness knows what else) into its large steel bins can’t do much for the quality of the wine, however quick and efficient it may be.  Having said that, the Languedoc has generally been known for quantity rather than quality and I believe that most of the machine harvested grapes end up in the local ‘co-operative’ where small producers share their harvest and share the production.  This may sound like A Bad Thing but actually our local co-operative produces some really delicious bottles – as well as some very average 5-litre bag-in-box examples! 

As usual I have not troubled myself with carrying out any research into this subject so it is all just personal opinion and based on my flimsy knowledge of what I consider to be good or bad wine – which is sadly also based on quantity, not quality (and traffic jams)!