![\"lhermite\"](\"http:\/\/powertasting.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/11\/LHermite.jpg\")
<\/a>L\u00e9on-Augustin L\u2019Hermitte, the Grape Harvest, courtesy of the Metropolitan Museum of Art<\/em><\/p>\nSeptember is a terrible time to go wine tasting.\u00a0 There is a constant threat of rain.\u00a0 The roads that were never too easy to travel at the best of times are packed with trucks that are heading, full of grapes, to the wineries.\u00a0 Even worse, you get to be a witness to the transformation of art into industry, turning nature\u2019s bounty into a factory product.\u00a0 If you get there on the right day, you might still be able to see vines with great clusters hanging from them.\u00a0 A day later and the vines are bare.\u00a0 And all you can see as you watch the grapes being harvested are ill-treated migrant farm workers.<\/p>\n
Okay, you must be asking, which is it?\u00a0 Is harvest time a good time to go to Wine Country or not.\u00a0 And the answer, of course, is both. \u00a0(If you\u2019re going wine tasting in Australia, Chile, Argentina or South Africa, harvest is likely to be in February or March, but let\u2019s keep this simple.)<\/p>\n For personal and business reasons, we often travel in September and our voyages almost always include wine tasting.\u00a0 This works better in especially hot years; the 2014 harvest in Northern California began in July in some vineyards.\u00a0 Thank you, global warming.\u00a0 August is the usual time to pick grapes in much of Italy.\u00a0 So we have experienced all the positives and negatives of the vendange<\/em>, as the French would put it.<\/p>\n The biggest question is how does the time of year affect the wine tasting experience.\u00a0 If you\u2019re traveling in an area where the wineries you\u2019d like to visit are large, well-funded and likely to derive significant revenue from vinotourism, your wine tasting experience should be only minimally affected.\u00a0 They have lots of bottles on hand and the tasting room employees are servers, unlikely to be in the fields filling baskets.\u00a0 But you may not find all the wines you\u2019d like to taste because they have all been previously consumed.\u00a0 Worst of all, you may find that some wineries are closed, because they have sold out the previous year\u2019s wines and haven\u2019t made this year\u2019s yet.\u00a0 We encountered this in California\u2019s Central Coast at Linne Calodo and Booker wineries in 2011.\u00a0 So call before you go.<\/p>\n In areas where the wineries are all or mostly small family affairs, you are indeed more likely to find the doors locked while moms, dads, kids and cousins are out in the vineyards bringing in the crops.\u00a0\u00a0 This recently occurred when we were out tasting in Beaujolais.\u00a0 \u201cDesol<\/em>\u00e9, monsieur<\/em>\u201d a somewhat grimy teenager would shrug.\u00a0 The only choice left to us was to taste the wines served in the local cooperatives<\/em>.\u00a0 These are open in all seasons and you do get a good education about the grapes and winemaking practices of the area.\u00a0 Unfortunately, the wines most of them pour are good but hardly representative of the quality that attracted you to that region of Wine Country to begin with.<\/p>\n Should you go wine tasting at harvest time?\u00a0 Yes, you should, because you should experience all the seasons that pass through Wine Country.\u00a0 Each month has its attractions and drawbacks, so there\u2019s no perfect time of year.\u00a0 All the same, if you are new to the fun of wine tasting, it might be better to hold off on being a \u201cpart\u201d of the crush until you know better what you are likely to get.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" September is a wonderful time of year to go wine tasting.\u00a0 Wine is necessarily grown in warm climates, and by September the heat has slackened a bit so it\u2019s more comfortable to pass through the vineyards.\u00a0 And even better you\u2019re there to watch the process of transforming agriculture into art: harvesting grapes, pressing them and … Continue reading Tasting at Harvest Time<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/powertasting.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/414"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/powertasting.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/powertasting.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/powertasting.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/powertasting.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=414"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/powertasting.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/414\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":417,"href":"https:\/\/powertasting.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/414\/revisions\/417"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/powertasting.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=414"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/powertasting.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=414"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/powertasting.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=414"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}<\/a>The crush at Saintsbury winery<\/em><\/p>\n