Starting a Vineyard Part 13 - Harvesting (& when to pick the grapes)

Harvest time on our small vineyard has come!! Deciding when to pick the grapes is a matter of judgement but there are some things that help make that decision.
So about 18 months after the first vine went into the ground, we are at the stage of actually picking some grapes. We are not expecting that many grapes because we are only in our second year. However, we should have enough to make a small batch of wine so that we can see what potential our vineyard has.
We are growing the Bacchus variety on a SO4 root stock. This particular variety is grown on a Double Guyot training system.
We used a simple Brix refractometer which shows the sugar content of fruit. A very useful device that requires no batteries. Approximately 0.55 of the sugar content will give you the potential alcohol content, so a Brix % of 19 will give a potential alcoholic content of about 10.45% This can always be increased by adding dextrose so that the final alcohol content is increased to the desired level.
Find the refractometer that we are using here: bit.ly/3BB74ca
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