Autumn was the order of the day, with numerous helpers and, of course, food.

I had already pre-ordered it for Thursdays during the week, it was supposed to be hot meatloaf with potato salad.

Our helpers include good friends, neighbors, old work colleagues and those who are interested.

Having gotten smarter over the past few years, we started in good fashion early in the morning.

At half past eight this year we had to leave home to get to the 17 km remote wine-growing region in the Kaiserstuhl.

Once there, the other helpers were already waiting. Either they had been provided with maps beforehand in order to find the Rebstückle, which despite all the love I found quite difficult at first and I got lost several times.

Immediately it was: gloves on, get the scissors ready for use and a short introduction to manual sorting.

Since 2017 was described as a particularly early year, which posed a particular challenge to healthy grapes.

That means the helpers had to be told how to sort.

If the grape smells of vinegar, if individual berries appear red, light and leaking, it is better to scrape them out with scissors.

Unfortunately, all that remains is the sad-looking, empty, wet grape skeleton that goes into the reading bucket.

Luckily, the harvest – at least mine – was limited. The spotted drosophila had held back on the Kaiserstuhl this year and fungal diseases such as botrytis had passed by, but had not caused any major damage.

So we got started and were soon done with the Pinot Noir. In the meantime, my mother was out with the dogs and offered to pick up the snack we had ordered.

She, in turn, called me completely distraught and told me that the meat loaf was still completely cold and asked me why I hadn’t pre-ordered it baked.

Good question, I personally didn’t think about it at all, for me it was of course baked.

Luckily she got to the butcher so early that he fired up the industrial oven and baked the meat loaf without further ado.

So she was able to pick him up at the agreed time and take us to the vines.

After the work was done, the beer bench in the vines was set up and the helpers took a seat.

I had prepared a green salad with separate salad dressing the night before and my mother brought home-baked apple pie and coffee.

A feast and we all had to laugh heartily at the thought of smearing the unbaked meatloaf mixture onto bread.

However, the day’s work wasn’t over as one might think.
For someone who sells to the winegrowers’ cooperative, the work ends at this point when the grapes are handed over, but we drove home with our grapes – in this case Pinot Noir and Pinot Blanc – and the destemming could begin.

It continued in the basement…