Weinlese – the Wine Harvest
Klaus JonesOctober 17th, 2009 at 4:56 pm
So, back to countryside Germany, Erlenbach again. I’d be spending 10 days working in the hills (literally) cutting grapes to make various sorts of wine. One thing I didn’t quite count on – how miserable the weather would be.
Most days it drizzled. Those it didn’t, it poured, or in the one case snowed – briefly, before turning to sleet. Oh, and the temperature never really got above 10 celcius, the average being 5-6.
Getting up at 6:30 to be out there working by 7:30, knocking off in the afternoon…long, exhausting days. I’d done various wine harvests before, on my family’s vineyard, but this was slightly more intense.
Not only working longer hours, the method was quite different too. Being a large producer of wine, the Kerner family (same guys who made the oil) had much more machinery to speed things up. Tractors galore (loved driving them around, mad fun), massive trailers capable of taking tons of grapes, huge tubs to be mechanically lifted onto trailers instead of the old fashioned way of climbing up a ladder and dumping grapes in – all of it made the experience quite new and exciting.
For example, manhandling 300kg tubs of grapes down a frost covered grass hill with an angle of 35 degrees, trying not to lose control and have it slide away, wreaking havoc through the vineyards. Then, once the tub is emptied, slogging back up that hill dragging it back up to be filled again. Fun times.
We harvested Riesling (white), Trollinger (light red) and Lemberger (stronger red), and all had specific types of rot that could and couldn’t be harvested. A crash course in grape rot later from the boss, with a helpful eye out from coworkers, and havesting went smoothly.
Inbetween working like madmen, we’d be getting fed massive lunches of pretty much meat and bread. Now, not just ham and bread, oh no. I’m talking roasts, snags, chunks of bacon as thick as your hand dripping hot fat, served with crusty farmers bread and fresh butter and cheeses. It was amazing. And out there in the cold, on the hills, you used all that energy, easily.
The people involved in the harvest were great, absolute champions. All been doing it for years, all country folk, really had a blast doing it all. The Kerner family (distant relatives) knew our family well, and there was scarely a day when I didn’t go home without a bottle of wine, some grapes of even a live chicken as a gift.
Yep, a chicken. As my grandparents are old, I got to prepare a live chicken from scratch – that was interesting. Watching a chicken run around like a, well, headless chicken, was quite a sight. Made a damn good soup though.
Speaking of running, that’s another thing I did once I’d knocked off for the day. 1-2 hour runs nightly, up and down the various vineyards, gave me some truly spectacular views of the sun setting through the hills. Unfortunately, once the sun had set the temp quickly dropped below 0 and I’d often come back with frost in my beard. On that note, running in a singlet, 2 tshirts, a jumper and a jacket kinda sucks – and I was still cold!
Also got the chance to meet up with my cousin Stefan and check out an Audi 100 year anniversary car show, which was pretty awesome. Unfortunately (or perhaps fortunately) there wasn’t any big festivities going on like last time I was here, because after Scotland I needed a bit of a detox.
The tine I spent harvesting were quite a significant change from my travels so far – obviously, I was working not partying – but 10 days was enough. Time to start the last leg of my journey – to Ireland and partying I go!