It’s a beautiful day – starting out cool in the morning, then warming up. The harvest is in full swing. Rully has been overrun with trailers since dawn. You can see the lines of grape-pickers moving forward through the vines. I have come to Paul’s to watch the grapes being sorted.

The grapes are brought in in boxes. The advantage of cases, compared to using hods or trailers, is that the grapes remain intact until they are put into the vat. This is a working method which is respectful to the fruit – the berries are hand picked, they carefully transported and then they are sorted manually.

The “sorting table” is a conveyor belt which takes the grapes to the de-stemmer, and then into the vat. Female workers are stationed on each side of the conveyor belt and they remove any grapes that are not considered to be up to scratch. Paul had told me that what happens on the sorting table is very important. He soon comes in and joins in the sorting.

It’s a different approach to machine-harvesting. I can well see that everyone has their own method. The way in which the harvest is carried out is one of the many stages in the complex wine-making process, but it is one stage amongst many others. Here, it is very clear that it is an important one.

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