A Day in the Harvest

Europe's earliest grape harvest is gathered here in high summer: by hand, in 15-kilo crates, and from the vine into the chill of the winery.

In Lanzarote the grapes are cut in July. Across most of Europe the harvest waits for autumn, and that early date is not the eccentricity of one forward-thinking winery: it is the calendar of the whole island. At Stratvs they present it as a mark of identity, and the dates kept by the other houses back them up.

“Our latitude, the privileged climate, the trade winds and the incomparable setting of La Geria prepare the arrival of our pickers for Europe's earliest grape harvest.” Bodega Stratvs, on its website

When the grapes are picked

The start of the harvest tracks the heat. In early July, the blog of Bodega Ignacio Romero was saying that the harvest was starting that week with the arrival of the high temperatures. At Los Bermejos they place the picking at the end of the month. The houses go by the year and the thermometer, and the exact date changes with every summer. Anyone who needs the date for a particular campaign finds it at the Regulatory Council of the D.O. Lanzarote.

What does not change is the month. July concentrates the picking, with the wineries spread between its beginning and its end, and for anyone planning a trip that is the window: a few weeks of the year when the whole island does the same work at once.

How the harvest is done

The landscape explains the work. The black ash blankets the ground and keeps the little rain that falls, and the trade wind, an Atlantic wind that blows almost without pause, is the reason every vine lives surrounded by a semicircular stone wall. There are no rows stretching away into the horizon: there are individual hollows, one per vine, dug into the ash.

Everything else is done by hand. On the website of David Fernández they describe it as their starting point: a manual harvest and a careful selection of the grapes in the plots. At Titerok-Akaet the harvest is manual too, with a practical detail: the grapes travel in 15-kilo crates so that they arrive in perfect condition, and once at the winery they are kept cold until destemming and maceration. What is kept there, they say, are the aromas and the freshness the grapes bring from the vineyard.

It is a harvest on the scale of a small house: pickers, crates that fit in your arms.

What the houses say

Each winery turns its harvest into an argument all its own. At Olivina they speak of limited productions that express what makes each vintage different. At Roca Negra they present it as heritage that is preserved with every harvest. And at Jable de Tao the harvest follows the soils: Malvasía volcánica and Listán negro picked over jable sand and volcanic soil, with fermentation in clay tinajas.

And there are harvests counted in short editions. Plot 40-01 of Titerok-Akaet, planted with white varieties, was picked on 29 July 2023 and ended in 773 bottles of 75 cl, at 13.5% alcohol. In wines like this one, the harvest date is written on the technical sheet next to the variety, and that July day is part of the bottle as much as the grape is.

If your trip lands in the harvest

It is not on record whether the wineries open to the public during the harvest, and their websites do not make it clear. If your plan includes visiting one in July, look at its booking calendar first, because a winery's priorities mid-harvest are not those of a Tuesday in February.

The landscape answers to no calendar. The visits of David Fernández and Ignacio Romero revolve around the cultivation: the walk through the vineyard and the story of how you farm a terrain that, at first sight, should not give grapes. It is the most direct way to understand the harvest, whether you have seen it or not.

If you want to see the island in its agricultural week, aim for July and check on the website of each house whether it is receiving visits on those dates. If your trip falls in other months, the hollows and the walls are still there, and the visit tells you the whole cycle, harvest included, even if you have missed it.

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