As you drive around the North Fork during the growing season, you’ll likely spot vineyard crews hard at work among the vines. While harvest season often gets the spotlight, vineyard management throughout the year plays just as important a role in the final wine.
In many ways, great wine begins in the vineyard.
A winemaker can only work with the fruit they receive, which means careful vineyard practices are essential to producing high-quality wine. Healthy, balanced grapes allow for a more thoughtful, hands-off approach in the winery and help showcase both the vintage and vineyard site more naturally.
One of the biggest vineyard decisions each harvest season is how the grapes will be picked: by hand or by machine.
At Suhru & Lieb Vineyards, we hand harvest our grapes. Both harvesting methods offer advantages, and the right choice depends on factors like:
Here’s a closer look at the differences between hand harvesting and mechanical harvesting in the vineyard.
Mechanical harvesting uses a machine that straddles the vineyard rows and gently shakes the vines to remove the grapes.
As the berries fall from the vine:
Mechanical harvesting is especially common for:
Because mechanical harvesters can move very quickly, entire vineyard blocks can be harvested in a fraction of the time required for hand harvesting.
Mechanical harvesters can pick grapes extremely quickly, making them ideal during tight harvest windows when weather conditions may change rapidly.
Machine harvesting reduces labor costs, which can be significant during harvest season.
For white wines, especially early-ripening varieties, speed matters. Quickly getting grapes into the press helps preserve freshness and acidity.
Mechanical harvesting can also create challenges depending on the grape variety and wine style.
Because the machine shakes berries from the cluster, some grapes split open during harvest. This can lead to:
Mechanical harvesting also mixes all fruit together, including:
For certain premium wines or delicate winemaking styles, that lack of selectivity can impact quality.
We choose to hand harvest because it gives us greater control over fruit quality and allows our vineyard team to evaluate every cluster individually.
Hand harvesting is slower and far more labor-intensive, but it offers several important advantages.
A skilled vineyard worker can harvest approximately:
That’s a tremendous amount of work—and an incredible amount of care goes into every vineyard row.
Hand harvesting allows the vineyard crew to remove:
Only the healthiest fruit makes it into the picking bins and eventually into the winery.
Whole grape clusters remain intact during hand harvesting, reducing oxidation and protecting delicate fruit.
Some wines require whole-cluster pressing, where the entire grape cluster—including stems and skins—is loaded directly into the press.
This technique is especially important for:
Whole-cluster pressing simply isn’t possible with machine-harvested fruit.
Harvest may only last a few months, but vineyard work happens year-round.
From pruning and canopy management to leaf pulling and harvest itself, vineyard crews play an enormous role in shaping the quality of the vintage long before the grapes ever reach the winery.
We’d like to take a moment to recognize the hardworking men and women who care for our vineyards throughout the year.
Their dedication, attention to detail, and countless hours of labor make every bottle possible.
Thank you for all that you do—we truly could not do it without you.
