Vintage 2017
Harvest is all consuming for the entire Giesen team – it’s the time of year we work 24 hours to ensure we create great wines for you to enjoy.
So, do we just walk into the vineyard and decide today is the day to pick the grapes? To make great wines it’s not that simple – there’s a lot of hard work that goes in before we even start harvesting.
Prior to vintage all the equipment is serviced and checked. Then we employ a small army of staff who work with our fulltime viticultural, winemaking and winery teams to ensure we can operate around the clock. Most of these extra staff are wine industry professionals from overseas, many of whom travel the world working on harvests in world’s great winemaking regions.
Giesen Cellar Door team help out too. They are in the kitchen seven days a week making harvest meals to fuel the teams for long hours.
Winemaking and viticulture teams are in the vineyards consistently throughout harvest, evaluating grapes. The most important thing, especially with our Sauvignon Blanc, is flavour – and the only way we find out about that is by sampling fruit straight from the vines. Giesen winemakers walk or drive through vineyards sampling grapes out to see how they taste. Along with a physical assessment, we take samples for the laboratory to analyse sugar and acid.
Once we are satisifed the grapes have the right flavour balance, the vineyard is scheduled for picking. Sometimes we even break up a vineyard into multiple pickings, because we strive for the best tasting, full flavoured fruit for our wines.
Once we decide a vineyard is ready to harvest, we have 24 hours to pick at the peak of freshness, before the grapes are carefully transported to the winery for the winemaking team to weave their magic. We go to great lengths to create great wines for you to enjoy!