The Wine Harvest

I won’t be quitting school to become a wine maker anytime soon. Last Wednesday some of us from IES went to a vineyard and helped with the grape harvest. Our program director John lives in a little house located on a vineyard and last week he mentioned that over the weekend he had helped with the harvest and one of the girls in our group though it sounded neat and said she really wanted to go. John got it all arranged and Wednesday afternoon we set off to pick grapes. After a 10 minute walk up the lane we got to the vineyard and it was beautiful. Apparently it’s one of the oldest vineyards in Tuscany and it has been in the same family for a few centuries. It was just as you’d expect a Tuscan vineyard to look with rolling hills and grape vines in every direction and a few small olive groves too. We met with the owner who was so excited to have the extra help, were given a few brief instructions and then we were let loose to cut the grapes.

Now this was not the I Love Lucy version of working at a winery where she just mashes the grapes with her feet. It was actually pretty hard work, not difficult but very labor intensive. You have to keep your eyes peeled to see some of the bunches and grapes also grow in the brush at the bottom of the vine and you have to cut them from the vine and fish them out of the branches and such. In the first 15 minutes I was absolutely covered in burrs. I felt like our cat Nelson when he comes in from outside. It was fun though working with everyone and talking and the grapes tasted great. After about an hour and a half the fun and novelty of harvesting grapes in the Tuscan countryside started to wear off and it just became work and we were supposed to be there for another hour. Finally it was time to head home and there was some confusion about our transportation back. We were going to take the bus, but Giacomo, the son of the owner, said that he’d drive us all back and we thought this meant that we’d take a few of the cars and head back apparently not. At 6:30 when we were going to leave we discovered that this meant he would be taking shifts of people for the 15 minute drive back to the city starting at 6:30. Needless to say it took a little longer than anticipated to get back, but as I have discovered in my first few weeks here this is the way many things turn out. Overall it was an awesome experience that I would not have wanted to miss, and I think in a few weeks we are getting either a bottle of their olive oil or wine as a thank you.