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This hot and steamy air mass is rapidly ripening the grape crop. The harvest began this week, days ahead of schedule and now the growers are scrambling to get the early grapes off the vines.
They’re hand-picking pinot noir grapes in the Henry of Pelham vineyard in St. Catharines. The higher the temperature rises, the faster they have to move.
Because of the heat, they’re harvesting 5 days ahead of schedule.
“This kind of heat means the grapes that are out there are going to be awesome. The vines are pumping in all this energy into a smaller crop so we’re going to get great quality. We’ll take that any day.” said Paul Speck who works at Henry of Pelham Winery.
It’s a smaller crop because of the brutal winter. Niagara growers lost about 25% of their grapes to the freeze, but this week growers are scrambling in the heat.
Starting early will give growers more options.
“To let the late varieties hang for more ripeness or bring them in early? Couldn’t be better to have this type of weather right now.”
A higher volume of grapes would have made the season perfect but they lost grapes in the winter freeze. The last time they had a full crop of 80 000 tonnes was a few years ago.
