Grapes Harvesting

I always thought that Grapes harvesting was something for September/mid October at the latest, but when we went to Villa Mimma during the end of October half term School Holidays we had a great surprise and managed to help a friend with one of his latest crops of organic grapes!!!

It was a beautiful day and we could see the Alps and in particular the pointy top of the Monviso mountain where the River Po starts and that you can admire from most of the Monferrato.

We started with a couple of hours harvesting. I remembered going to pick the grapes when i was little in my Grandfather's vineyards near Villa Mimma, but I was worried that my three boys (aged 9, 7 and 6) would have got bored. I was surprised to see how much effort they put into it and how much fun we had.

Leonardo and Isabella, our friends, really treated us to a lovely afternoon because after the hard work we went to the cellar and pressed some of the grapes that were picked a couple of days earlier - I learnt that one of the tips of organic wine making is to leave the grapes to die completely for a couple of days, hence we could not press the one we picked ourselves.

Anyway, we had great fun watching the cores being spat out by the machine and the kids thought they were drinking wine when they were given the juice off a massive "dustpan" type of thing :-)

As it wasn't enough yet, we went to see what was happening in the big "botti" and the kids climbed up the ladder to go and look inside to their delight.

Tired and hungry at 7pm we had a "merenda" of "salame", "focaccia" and the most delicious onion quiche that you could have ever tasted, all made by Isabella, accompanied by a couple of Lorenzo's delicious organic wines.

As soon as I have some photos reformatted, I'll post a few for everybody to envy! It was a lovely time and a grate memory for me.