Soggy grape harvest saved by hand

Multinational grape pickers are proving the heroes of a rain-plagued 2013 Hunter Valley vintage that is now in its nail-biting red harvest phase.

Despite rainfall of some 175 millimetres over a 48-hour period, the white grape harvest is almost done and dusted with tonnages down 20 to 30 per cent and quality up.

Vignerons are praying for warm, sunny weather this week so they can get their red grapes ripe and into the crushers.

Their anxiety rests on memories of a 2008 red vintage wiped out by rain and a 2012 red harvest in which many growers were forced to drop all their rain-sodden shiraz grapes on the ground.

Rain during this vintage has hampered mechanical harvesting, with the machines becoming bogged in vineyards. This has meant  greater reliance on the army of hand fruit pickers comprising Aussie regulars,  working holiday visa holders and visitors from  countries such as China, Ukraine, Latvia, Korea, Germany, Belgium, France, Denmark, South Africa and New Zealand.

Broke-based winemaker Andrew Margan, the president of the Hunter Valley Wine Industry Association, said recent vintages had brought increasing numbers of international visitors to the Hunter to pick grapes and work as winery hands.

He had three New Zealanders, a Ukrainian and a South African among his winery workforce for this vintage.

The white vintage was virtually complete, he said, with regional grape tonnages down about 20 per cent, although the white harvest from his own vineyards was up 10 per cent.

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