2015 The Machine Harvesting Debate

Speaking of which, things went somewhat awry during the spring of 2014.  Flowering conditions were challenging, with quite a bit of rain falling and 10 nights when the temperature dropped below 8°C. This led to a slightly disappointing yield of 4.31 tonnes per hectare but it would be foolish of us to complain. The remainder of the season was excellent, mimicking 2014 in many ways, including an average temperature of 19.9°C, allowing Cabernet Sauvignon to ripen easily, in 118 days, with a median harvest date of 16th March and an alcohol content of 14.1%. As expected with the lower yield, the style shows firmer tannin, in keeping with years like 1981 and 1986 but with riper fruit presence than both of those.

In 2015, we decided to run an interesting experiment. It may surprise readers to learn that all the Moss Wood wines are still harvested by hand, which makes us an exception in the Australian wine industry. The harvest team picks individual bunches, places them in 7kg buckets, and these are collected, emptied into bigger bins, which are delivered to the winery. The fruit arrives in near pristine condition. Machine harvesters, on the other hand, are very fast and efficient but they remove the crop by shaking the vines with beaters, causing the berries to fall off and which are captured and conveyed into on-board receival bins. These are then offloaded and delivered to the winery.

To give an indication of the efficiency gain, the actual picking of Moss Wood and Ribbon Vale by hand takes approximately 300 hours. A machine harvester would finish the task in 30 hours. With the significant savings on offer, it’s fair to ask why we continue with hand picking?

In 2015, we sought to provide a careful answer by doing a trial with Moss Wood Semillon. In this case, two batches were made.  On Day 1, we picked all the odd numbered rows by hand and on Day 2, we picked all the even numbered rows by machine. The two wines were kept separate and then tasted blind, using the Australian Wine Research Institute protocols. We showed statistically that we could identify the two different batches and that we preferred the hand harvested one.  

Why would this be the case? The answer is the machines, by virtue of their harvesting technique, do damage to the fruit and the vines and collect not just the grapes but also leaf matter, wood from the vines and even small animals that live amongst the vines like frogs and snails. The new generation machines, such as the one we used in our trial, have excellent on-board sorting systems to remove most, but not all, of the unwanted material. In addition, some juicing occurs during the process, which can lead to oxidation and other problems; however, the impact can be minimised by harvesting in the cool of the night. Since our aim is to make the wine of the highest possible quality, and that all such wines around the world are made this way, we have no choice but to continue to harvest by hand.