Page 17 - Best of 2016 English

from Worms, a city in the Rheinhessen region, has been working with harvesters for 30 years and has witnessed their development. He can still remem- ber the early days of automation, when machines brutally beat the grapes from the stem while also pulling on the vines. Today the machines shake the vines like an apple tree until the centrifugal force separates the grapes from the stem. ey fall onto a bucket belt that conveys them into the contain- ers.
Is wine from grapes harvested by machine as good as wine gathered by hand? “Ideally, yes,” says Schembs. „However the harvesters do not pick out unripe or rotted grapes.” For premium wines, these must be carefully sorted out by hand. „But it is only a matter of time until the machines will be able to take over,” he says. “Developers are already working on optical sorters that recognize the color di erences and sort out grapes with a less than ideal color.”
e harvester’s big bene t remains its speed. When the weather hampers manual harvesting and the winemaker is running out of time, the bad grapes are picked out by hand and the machine takes care of the rest. Sometimes the peak har- vesting period comes very suddenly. Ice wine, for example, must be harvested as soon as the temper- ature drops below roughly 20° F for the rst time. In extreme cases, the winemakers may have only three to six hours to complete the harvest.
A grape harvester costs between 300,000 and 800,000 euros, and is in use for only four weeks a year. ese farm machines are consequently primarily purchased and operated by machinery contractors. Schembs also rents the harvesters.
For his best wines, on the other hand, he works completely without machines, including presses and pumps. His Chateau wines are stamped by foot and le to mature in the cellar of the Herrn- sheim Castle. Only the best vintages land here. e last was from 2011, and the Eichelmann 2013 wine guide calls the 2009 “Germany’s best white Cuvée. “Was it harvested by machine? e winemaker laughs, “I’m sure the 2022 will be!”
Above: Narrow gauge tractor with mulcher and a lateral disc that looks like a can opener: This so-called rotary hoe from Rust breaks up the soil between the grapevines. Left: White wine matures best in such metal tanks: Arno Schembs in his wine cellar. Lower left: The harvester’s curiously narrow shape is necessary due to the tight spacing in the vineyard, with less than 7 feet between the rows of vines
Corrugated sheet in the vineyard: This historic Citroën Transporter (1974) is also a part of the vintner’s expanded eet of farm machines. In the background is the castle in the Herrnsheim section of Worms. The castle’s cellar is used to age the Chateau wines that are pressed without machines. Info: www.chateau-schembs.de
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