19 Oct Hand Harvesting: What You Taste in the Glass

A wine begins to take shape the moment someone cuts the bunch from the vine. That is why hand harvesting is a priority at Dominio de Berzal, and it shows in the care we put into every bottle.

Choosing Before Picking

When grapes are harvested by hand, each bunch is inspected before it goes into the picking basket. We decide which bunches to keep, which to leave behind, which are ready and which need more time. This bunch-by-bunch selection is why we hand-pick most of our grapes.

To be fair, mechanical harvesters have improved considerably and now do a very good job. Even so, harvesting in Rioja is still predominantly done by hand, and we prefer to leave that decision in human hands.

What You Taste in the Glass

Grapes selected bunch by bunch arrive at the winery in better condition, and that is the first thing that makes its way into the wine. The more carefully we select the grapes in the vineyard, the less we need to correct later on. It is a slower, more demanding way of working, but we believe it allows each grape variety and each vineyard plot to express itself at its best.

A Way to See for Yourself

Soon, you will be able to experience this with the grapes from the current vintage. We are already working on Recient, the first wine of each new harvest, made using carbonic maceration. The whole bunches are placed directly into the fermentation tank, where they ferment before being pressed, and fermentation then continues with the must. This method only works if the grapes arrive intact, making it the best demonstration of how we harvest at Dominio de Berzal.

We will keep you updated as the process unfolds.