Grape Picking at St. Croix Vineyards

Grapes

Tom and I enjoyed an afternoon of grape picking at St. Croix Vineyards on Saturday. The staff at the Vineyards started us off with lunch and wine, then we headed out into the vines for a lesson in picking.

Clippers!

We used clippers to remove the bunches of grapes and any dried or bird/bee eaten ones in the bunch. All grapes—good or bad—had to be removed so the vines would know it was time to get ready for winter. Bad ones were dropped unceremoniously to the ground while the worthy grapes were tossed into yellow lugs, for easy collection later.

I wore my own gloves, but most of the volunteers worked bare-handed. Pickers who are paid by the pound, according to the vineyard staff, tape metal talons to their fingers to enable them to pick quickly, Wolverine-style. We were glad we weren’t being paid by the pound.

Martha Combines Two Lugs Grapes

At the end of the day, we were repaid for our hard labor with two bottles of wine each — that’s a half a bottle of wine an hour. Not bad for an afternoon’s work.

Tom loading the wine

marthaandtom's Grape Harvesting at St. Croix Vineyards photoset marthaandtom’s Grape Harvesting at St. Croix Vineyards photoset

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This entry was posted by Martha on Sunday, September 27th, 2009 at 9:24 pm and is filed under Travel, Wine. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

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7 Responses to “Grape Picking at St. Croix Vineyards”

    Comments

  1. Aunt Sue Says:
    September 28th, 2009 at 11:27 am

    Looks like fun!

  2. Crystal Says:
    September 30th, 2009 at 3:45 pm

    Great idea! How did you find out about this? Do they do it every year?

  3. Martha Says:
    September 30th, 2009 at 6:04 pm

    We found about about picking from a friend who does this annually. I’m happy to pass on the email address where you can request to be on the list (I’ll email you, Crystal).

  4. Amy Says:
    October 3rd, 2009 at 10:49 am

    Martha–what a fun blog–great pictures that told the story. Tom looks pretty happy with the day’s pay!

  5. Ruth Says:
    July 24th, 2010 at 7:12 pm

    Hi,

    My friends and I are interested in picking grapes this fall. How do we find out where to go and who to contact to find out when the picking starts. I have heard it is a great experience.

    thanks
    Ruth

  6. Martha Says:
    July 25th, 2010 at 12:02 pm

    Ruth,
    If you’d like to volunteer at St. Croix Vineyards (just outside of Stillwater) just email info@scvwines.com and ask them to put you on their email list for volunteer harvesting.

    Hope you have a chance to try it!

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