Wine For My First Harvest

Wednesday I participated in my very first grape harvest, and I have to say, I thought it was glorious.

Cretaiole had already planned a group visit to Icario Winery in Montepulciano for today, and the night before we found out that they were going to be harvesting the grapes and we were invited to join in.

We got very lucky in that the sky was clear and blue, but the temperatures were only in the sixties, so we didn’t roast. The Aussies in the group were telling us about their experiences of harvesting in Australia in temperatures of 110 degrees, and let me tell you, it did not sound fun.

We arrived at the vineyards, were taken by truck down to the vineyards and, armed with a plastic bucket and a pair of shears, we were sent out into the rows. These grapes don’t grow too low, so while there was some bending over required, there was not so much of it that you feared you might never stand up straight again.

The grape we were harvesting was a varietal I had never heard of before, but which they told us was usually grown in Northern Italy. Icario uses it in their entry level wine, blending it with Sangiovese.

I didn’t think about it while I was working, but afterward, Steve mentioned that it was therapeutic, working in the vineyard, and I have to say I agree with him. You can’t think too much when doing the work, you just get into a groove and move from bunch to bunch, cutting, looking to see if there is any mold in the grapes and either cutting it away or discard the bunch, place the bunch in your basket and move onto the next.

Periodically, the tractor advances through the rows and people riding along with it collect your basket, dump the contents into a big tray, and return the basket to you to be refilled.

There is something so beautiful to me about those bunches of grapes, so dark purple and full to bursting. The weight of them was something I didn’t expect, some of the fruit so ripe that it burst when you touched it. And the sweetness of them. Not cloying, but just so wonderfully….ripe. Like no grape I have ever tasted before.

After about two hours, we were taken back up to the winery itself where we saw the trays of grapes that we had just picked get poured out into a long tray which jiggles the clusters of grapes toward the de-stemmer, where the grapes are separated from their stems, partially crushed and funneled into large stainless steel tanks where they will begin the period of maceration (where the juice and skins and seeds all soak together to impart color, flavor, tannins, structure to the wine. Then fermentation will begin.

I will have to try to get a bottle of the 2010 wine when it is released, so I can drink it and say, “I picked this fruit!”

From there we were led to a long table where we had lunch and of course, some of Icario’s wines.

Lunch was pecorino cheese, prosciutto, salami, and bruschetta with what may have been the best tomatoes I have ever tasted. I am not a fresh tomato lover normally, but these were extraordinary: deep, ripe red, sweet, and mixed with fresh basil and olive oil.

I have noticed in Italy that none of the bruschetta we have eaten has contained any garlic, which I think is lovely. Bruschetta in The States is always screaming with garlic, and I think all it does is mask the taste of the tomatoes and olive oil. It is very possible though, that if a restaurant is using un-ripe tomatoes that maybe they need that garlic to mask the flavor.

The first wine we tasted was their white, NYSA 2008 Bianco Toscano, which is a blend of 60% Pinot Grigio, 30% Gewurztraminer, and 10% Pinot Nero (Noir) vinified to be white instead of red.

This was one of the most interesting white wines I have ever had. It is aged in oak barrels which imparts its dark color, and the little bit of Pinot Noir in it gives it a lot of oomph and body. I also found it fascinating that this Italian winery s making a white wine from grapes which I would much more readily associate with Alsace than with Italy.

The first whiff of it, when it was very cold still, yielded a lot of golden delicious apple and grapefruit pith and peel, but as it warmed up, the sweet scent of honey, caramel and apple cider started to dominate. On the palate, the apple was strong,er than the citrus, and a caramel/butterscotch flavor lingered.

We also sampled one of their reds, the Vino Nobile de Montepulciano 2007, which is a blend of 80% Sangiovese, and 20% Colorino, Canaiolo and Merlot. This wine was much more what I ave come to think of as a Tuscan wine, with black cherry, red cherry smoke, leather dried and stewed fruits, violets and that light tinge of iron all emerging.

It was an absolutely lovely day.