SALADO — Early Saturday morning, friends, family and other volunteers joined in the annual grape harvest at the Salado Winery’s vineyard, 21724 Hill Road.
They would bring in about a ton of grapes before they finished with the Chardonnay section of the 30-acre vineyard later that morning, said June Ritterbusch, owner of Salado Winery Co. and Salado Wine Seller, 841 N. Main St. in Salado.
She provided everyone with buckets and pruners, and they scattered throughout the rows. They grasped the light-colored vine clusters and cut them free with the pruners.
“You are not going to hurt the plant,” she said. “It’s not very physically demanding.”
This is her 15h harvest, she said, and she and her crew pick different varieties at different times. Wednesday it will be Sangiovese grapes and next Saturday it will be Merlot. Her fourth variety of grapes is Cabernet Sauvignon. She produces 13 kinds of wine.
Wasps and bees attracted by the fruit sometimes bother the harvesters, but she had a sting remedy on hand.
“My biggest problem with grape growing is raccoons,” she said. “They have stolen about 10 percent of my crop.”
She puts out Havahart traps and sets up game cameras at night. All the cameras do is show that, for the raccoons, the vineyard is like a party, she said.
The wine industry in Texas has been exploding, she said. When she started in 2005, there were 40 wineries in the state. Now there are 750.
Crystal Wilcox of Round Rock and her niece, Janessa Pina of Austin, who will be a freshman in tourism and hospitality at Austin Community College, said they’d never harvested grapes before.
“We’re just trying to find them,” Wilcox said of the grape clusters.
“It’s very calming,” Pina said.
Alexandra Mares of Salado, a graduate of Holy Trinity Catholic High School in Temple, was quietly at work in the vineyard. She will be a senior this year at Hobart and William Smith Colleges in Geneva, N.Y., she said, majoring in economics.
In the fall of 2019, she went to France to study the wine industry. During her senior year, she plans on working at a French winery.
“After I graduate, I’m going to move there and work full time,” she said. “I spent a lot of time at wineries in France, so I’ve watched the whole operation.”
Her mother, Yolanda Cortes Mares, was working in the next row.
“I thought this would be a perfect day to bring my daughter out,” she said. “I’m a gardener. I enjoy plants.”
She’s tried to grow grapes here in Salado, she said, but without success. The exception is wild mustang grapes.
“I don’t have to do anything to them,” she said. “They just grow.”
Lisa and Edward Beale of Salado had their daughter, Illeona, 4, in tow. Lisa said they’d been coming to the harvest ever since their daughter was born.
“It’s a family tradition,” she said.
Paula Miller of Salado said it was her first time in the vineyard since its blessing service by St. Joseph’s Episcopal Church in Salado.
“It’s real great,” she said. “We’ve had some good pictures. I’ll stay as long as my body will let me.”
July 26, 2020 at 06:33AM
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