This week the ripening (véraison) began. It is the turning point towards harvest. Veraison comes from the same root as the word veritas, which means truth. In Roman mythology, Veritas was the elusive goddess of truth. Now is the time when the green grapes are actually transforming into their destiny.
According to wikipedia: Véraison is a French term, but adopted into the English literature on viticulture. The official definition of véraison is "change of color of the grape berries." (In French it has an accent over the first e and in English this is absent.) Véraison signifies the change from growth to berry ripening in the grapevines.
The excitement around véraison is that you can see the progress in the vineyard. The grapes are turning from green to purple by the day.
To those of us who live and breathe in the vineyard, veraison starts the countdown to harvest.
The de-leafing is finished and the grape thinning (the green harvest) began this past week. A green harvest is the removal of immature or non-uniform grape bunches to reduce yield with the aim of producing a finer wine. In French it is known as the vendanges vertes.
Maybe I'm being overly sentimental, but you can almost hear the vines whispering to one another . . . "it's almost time!"
