September, the grape harvest month: between culture and tradition

September is the month in which all of us, after a short summer break, come back to the so-called “normal” life: schools, sports activities, work, going out with old friends start again, along with all those thousand things we never have time to do, but that we manage to complete anyway.

Often perceived as the first period of a new year, September is a month full of objectives and commitments, to be faced with a renewed spirit and a lot of recovered energy.

And also our vineyards are ready to provide us with the material necessary to carry out our work: grapes have in fact rested enough and are ready to be harvested, processed and transformed first into must and then, finally, into wine.

The moment of harvest coincides with that in which the bunch of grapes has reached the right degree of phenolic maturity, namely the perfect balance between acids and sugars present in the grape and in the skin.

Patience in winemaking is fundamental: an early harvest can give life to wines that are too sour, while a late one is synonymous with wines with a sweet trend, such as Passiti.

In short, to obtain an ideal grape to turn into wine, it is necessary to have optimal vines, soils and climatic conditions, as well as impeccable vineyard management techniques.

The best areas for planting the vineyard are certainly those characterized by mild and not particularly rigid winters, in which the vine can grow and develop, and then be put to use and obtain the first harvest.

The quality of the grapes is obviously another fundamental factor to produce a wine of value: the grapes must be intact, without defects and molds, in order to reach the ripening and harvesting phase intact.

Once the grapes are harvested, manually or with grape harvesting machines, it is necessary to separate the suitable grapes from the altered ones: after this long and careful selection, the grapes are sent for vinification.

The harvest has always represented a magical moment, a ritual that has been handed down for centuries, from generation to generation, rich in peasant knowledge and traditions of popular culture.

It is as if, with the harvest, the sums of a year of hard work were drawn up and new balances were made to understand how the past season went.

This year, as it always happens, all the Tenute d'Italia’s brands are about to start a new harvest, too, after a careful and patient analysis in the vineyards: the time has come for all of us to reap the fruits of our work and to start an even more scrupulous one, so as to provide you with the beloved fruit of our land, with the passion and dedication that distinguish us.