Genuinely curious as to why the OP is inquiring. I can’t imagine a winemaking topic about which I care less.
There are a lot of grapes between Hwy 29 and Silverado Trail (valley floor) in Napa that are machine harvested.
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Coche-Dury aligoté is nice, though absurdly priced on the secondary market.
This may have changed, but the Pierre Guillemot wines used to be mostly machine-harvested.
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We need a foot stomped vs machine crush thread too.
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I hadn’t thought much about it tbh but now that it has been brought up I’m interested in the topic for sure.
I receive lots of pitches for European wines that say the fruit is hand-harvested.
I shared a space with a guy who had some machine harvested Pinot Noir and in straightforward vintages in made nice wines.
But…in years with botrytis or other issues it made fairly crappy wines, especially as compared to other wines he made from hand picked fruit.
You also have no option on the use of stems, so a wine from machine harvested fruit might sometimes be as good as a wine from hand picked fruit…
But it will NEVER be as good as a whole cluster wine from hand picked fruit. Just sayin…
Edit: and for @larry_schaffer any winery using whole cluster in the wines can be assumed to be hand harvesting for those wines.
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Foot stomped for the win…
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We get some machine harvested Sauvignon Blanc and it works just fine. Makes the day shorter too as much greater tonnage/pressload can be done. Wouldn’t do it with Pinot Noir but I know fancy wineries that have done it with fancy fruit from a vineyard we both get fruit from.
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Just picked my winemakers brain about this (he spent 20ish years working in NZ and AUS). He said that especially with the optical sorting on modern harvesters that the difference in quality is basically non existent. The built in de-stemmers treat the fruit just the same as the de-stemmers back at the winery would.
Seems like older harvesters might hurt the fruit a bit but the newer machines have gotten much better.
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Yep, if you do any whole cluster, you can’t machine pick . . . unless you do a small percentage that can be picked separately from the machine packed stuff (just to throw a proverbial wrench in here) 
Cheers
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I’m a bit confused here in that I was under the impression that all mechanical harvesters simply shook the vines to remove the grapes, leaving the stems behind . . . and therefore would have have destemming capabilities. Anyone have anything to add here? Or are there newer models that actually allow for whole clusters to somehow be clipped?
Cheers
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When i said built in de-stemmer it was a poor choice of words. I believe they just shake the fruit off stem but the conveyor/basket/sorting systems have apparently come a long way and are just as gentle as most equipment in the cellar.
Any info on if the process of shaking off the vines causes much damage?
Cloudy Bay’s ‘normale’ S-B is machine harvested, and pretty good from my consumption over the years. They do use manual pickers for their luxe barrel fermented cuvee, whose name eludes me.
There are many solid Bordeaux estates using machines like the large production Pomerol, de Sales. And as mentioned upthread, when conditions are cooperative, that method doesn’t seem to impair the berries, and the wines end up being good. To wit: I followed the cooperative weatherwise 1998 over twenty years and it punched way above its sawbuck price, but the wretched 2013 conditions made its $8 (!) price a rip off.
I just had a 2009 d’Escurac [Medoc] over the last few days, which is an estate mostly machine harvested, although there are rumblings of attempts to go manual. In a year like 2009 where the grapes were ripe and disease free, it is still a tasty, plummy drink at age 16. I’m not sure how vintners who like some element of whole cluster stemminess would be able to use this technology though.
A close friend works at Case New Holland, one of the big agricultural equipment manufacturers (their color is baby blue), and they have all kinds of automatic, remote/auto controlled equipment. On large plots of land, they can set up radio beacons at key spots, and have super precise control. It’s not just for row crop commodities either; he showed me some grape harvesters they have. So the future is not just machine picking, at the optimal time 24/7/365, but without needing as much humans involved even in that already lower labor process.
The current difficulty in procuring migrant farm labor across the US – also in Western Europe – seems like it will hasten these changes. I’m ok with mechanized picking – if these techniques can lead to more B+ and A- quality level wines at non trophy prices; that will be good for the whole community. Tasty entry level wines, which offer some regional character are the doorway for enthusiasts who might eventually trade up.
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I recall quite a few years ago there was a study… don’t know if it was officially published or not, about a side by side test on Cabernet machine and hand picked and the wines were tasted. Seems there was no difference, or the machine might have won.
Some grape varieties lend themselves to machine harvest by how easily the berries come off of the stems. Cab, Gewurtz and Sangiovese are three that I’m aware of that pick easily. As expected technology has improved drastically in the last 20 years with harvestors… especially with optical sorting.
Disclaimer…I personally never had a machine pick any of the fruit I was responsible for and I got out of the business right before. The guys at Navarro were going to allow Gewurtz to be picked by machine, but I found a second crew for those days.
Every field we planted in the last 20 years were all set up for machine harvest…meaning no wooden stakes or endposts, no wide cross arms and no quad systems, although I’m told there are machines that can pick a quad.
Nate Weiss could likely weigh in as a guy who’s been around a heckova lot of Cabernet vineyards.
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I know a local grower he mentioned similar things to me in the past that the vineyard had to be set up differently including row width. Not sure how true that is, but I believed him. He has his vineyards all hand picked.
Here is an interesting winemakers perspective from Australia.
Many years ago (25 ?) there was a magazine blind tasting in Oz that compared hand picked vs machine picked. I think it was Coonawarra Cab Savs. @Kent_Comley may know / remember more. As I remember there was no difference detected amongst the tasters between machine and hand picked.
Not taking a position here, just find this interesting.
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I’ve had a lot of lovely wines made from machine picked fruit. There are some wines and styles where you would really rather hand pick for quality, especially whites for which you want to minimise skin extraction e.g. sparkling, and of course whole cluster ferments, as mentioned above. Another niche one is frost taint - you REALLY don’t want to machine pick grapes if the leaves have frozen and died.
But especially for red grapes that are going to be destemmed and fermented on skins, I don’t think you would expect any difference in machine vs hand picking (and the comparative tastings mentioned above bear that out).
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I am not aware of this one Brodie, but I do recall there was a study re Coonawarra Cab Sauv soem 30 or so years looking at machine pruned v hand pruned that at the time contended little discernable difference to overall quality. Over time this did not hold true from what I have seen as canopies became too large and umproductive.
Machine harvesting is very efficent where there is low disease pressure and ensures fruit gets to teh crusher rapidly.