As you drive by the New Kent Winery this week, you may notice individuals intently working along our grape vines.  If you’ve ever wondering what in the world they are up to, now you know: they are harvesting the grapes!  Each person is delicately plucking grapes from the vines and collecting them in those bright yellow containers.

Next step: pressing the grapes! If the first thing that comes to mind is Lucy and Ethel stomping grapes in the iconic TV show I Love Lucy, you may need to swing by and see how it’s really done. Each morning we harvest our grapes and over the next two weeks we will be crushing and pressing them; these are the first steps in the wine making process.

What’s the difference in crushing and pressing, you ask?  Crushing the grapes is done before fermentation, and it changes the grape from a solid form to a mushy “soup” that you can stir around in a fermenter.  Pressing the grapes requires some machinery, specifically a wine press, that removes all the solids so what’s remaining is a juice.

Want to know more? We would love for you to visit the New Kent Winery and see the harvest in action, and learn more about how we create our delicious wines.  Harvesting of our white grapes begins the week of September 6.  Over the following two weeks, we will crush and press our grapes.  We hope you will join us to participate in these early stages of the wine making process.