Barr Creekside Vineyard

The Harvest

    This years hand picked harvest was completed in two parts; the first for our own wine and the latter for J. Lohr who purchased the remaining tonnage.  The first part consisted of two 8 man crews on Friday Oct. 17 and one 8 man crew on Saturday Oct. 18th who picked approximately 8 tons. 

    The remainding 56 tons was picked by a small army of 52 men on Wednesday October 22 and Thursday October 23rd.  The larger scale operation took 6 farm tractors and trailers, 27 1/2 ton bins, 3 truckloads (four gondolas each) and one heavy duty forklift with a bin dumper. 

The Crush

   Our tonnage that we retained for our own wine production was taken to Templeton Wine Services for processing.  This process is also labor intensive requiring at least 6 people to man the equipment.  After weigh-in the bin is dumper into a vibrating hopper which is the intial step to screen foreign objects, juices and raisined fruit from the final product.  The hopper then dumps directly onto the conveyor belt sorting table where two people manually remove leaves, stems, raisined fruit from the bunches, and all other foreign objects. 

    The fruit is then sent up the conveyor belt and dumped into the crusher/destemmer which seperates the fruit from the stems, leaves which may have made it through the manual screen and drops the berries onto a screen which is its first contact with the vibrating table.  This process screens raisined fruit from entering the tank, and the fruit which remains on the table is scattered as individual berries so the last two people are able to remove all the green stems/jacks that remain. 

   Finally the cream of the crop is dropped into an auger pump that directly pumps into the tank for the fruits intial soak.