About sorting wine grapes
I shot this photo a year ago at the Bodegas Mas Alta winery in the Priorat wine region of Spain. The purpose of this labor-intensive work is to find and toss out any irregular berries. This is done in many wineries across all wine regions of the world. In general, this practice is for very high quality wines. In the Priorat region of Spain, it is common practice to double sort the grapes that have been harvested. Prior to sorting the berries, the grape clusters are trimmed of all vegetation and then sent to the de-stemmer. Recently, an optical sorting machine was invented that can do the work of sorting wine grapes very quickly and efficiently. These machines are very expensive and only a few wineries have purchased them. Expect more and more wineries to purchase these machines in the future, as the cost drops in price. After sorting the wine grapes, the berries in this case are moved to the crushing device and then dropped into fermenting tanks. The grapes in this photo are all Garnacha grapes. In France, this grape is called Grenache.