Grape Picking 2004

As a tradition, every Columbus Day, our squadron goes down to our winegut, Ernie, on the Mosel River to go grape picking. We pick grapes all morning and then retire to the wine cellar in the afternoon to eat lunch and enjoy great wine. Each year's harvest is vastly different than the last, so it's so exciting for us to finally taste each year's Hawk wine. The summer of 2003 produced one of the best Riesling vintages for Germany due to the intense heatwave in July.

When our squadron goes down to Ernie's to grape pick, it is usually about the end of the harvest season, depending on the weather.

Each year, Ernie (and all the other weinguts) leaves a field of grapes unpicked in the hopes that God will bless his vineyards and the Mosel River with good weather. Good weather (moderate temperatures) is necessary so that these remaining grapes will continue to ripen and become increasingly sweet without spoiling or rotting too quickly. Every few years the weather is in the favor of all the local weinguts and stays moderate until the beginning of November. Then a sudden deep freeze comes along mid to late November, which allows the wineguts to produce the highly coveted Eiswein. Eiswein is strictly regulated by the government and can only be produced under these conditions (so no freezing grapes in the freezer!).

When the deep freeze comes along, all of the wineguts rush outside in the middle of the night to cut the grapes from the vines they have left to ripen. Once the frozen grapes are picked, they are rushed to the grape press (see pictures below). Because the grapes are frozen, all of the water inside the grapes has also frozen into little ice cubes within the skins leaving only the sweet nectar to be pressed out. Because there is no water in the extracted juice, the wine that is produced called, "Eiswein," is extremely sweet, smooth, and very limited in quantity. From the field that is left to ripen to hopefully make Eiswein, only about 50 small bottles can be produced. Making Eiswein is a gamble, since the weather can be sporadic and not conducive to its production. If the weather is too warm and a deep freeze doesn't come along, the field that has been left to ripen goes to waste and the weinguts have accept the financial losses.

Everyone (kids included) is equipped with cutting shears and buckets and we all tell stories throughout the day. We look forward to grape picking all year and have such an amazing time out in the fields. We don't get to buy the wine until after it's finished fermenting and ready for bottling the following summer...just in time for the next Columbus Day grape picking.

From the grapes we pick, Ernie produces about 400 bottles of our squadron wine, which varies from year to year depending on which vineyards we harvest. These pictures show the grapes that we had just picked get transferred to the wine press where they then get all their juice squeezed out (you can see the juice filtering through the bottom of the press). The juice is then transferred by a vacuum to big wine vats where it will then ferment and be transformed into our delicious Hawk wine.

The last picture shows a container full of all the grape skins after all the grapes had been pressed.