Late at night all across wine country during harvest you'll see pools light floating amongst the vines. Just what is going on out there? They are picking grapes in the middle of the night. Night picks are often done for fragile grapes like Pinot Noir. And it's all about temperature. Ideally you want to get the grapes off the vine and into the winery at the coolest temperature possible. This helps guard against spontaneous fermentation, which has a much easier time getting started at higher temperatures. Getting grapes to the winery cool, and keeping them that way makes sure that you are in control of when fermentation starts. And believe it or not, 3:30 am is a fun time to be in the vineyard with everything very quite, and these brilliant orbs of light floating down the rows with the pickers moving fast in the cool night.
