To harvest with machine or by hand? Some really don’t have a choice, e.g., producers who have vineyards on very steep slopes where no harvesting machine dares to tread. But that is starting to change. A German company, CH Engineering, offers a machine that can handle slopes of up to 75% (37 degrees).
The harvester is mounted as a module on a crawler-tractor (chenillard). You can actually use different units and, besides harvesting, also do initial pruning or manage the canopy, depending on the need. Forty tractors for really steep slopes are currently used in Europe, mainly in Germany, France, Switzerland and Austria, and now the first one has been put into service in California.
Read more: winebusiness
Note: It is (also) a myth that manual harvesting is obviously better than harvesting with a harvesting machine. Machine harvesting can be better or worse than manual harvesting depending on the circumstances.
Read more about benefits and drawbacks of machine and manual harvesting here in a BKWine Magazine article.
