Many have opinions on this matter. Often, people believe that manual harvest, with “real” vendangeurs is better, not necessarily without knowing why. We would rather say, like in most things in wine, that it depends. Manual harvest has the benefit that the harvesters can do a selection already in the vineyard but that requires skilled and trained workers, which is not always the case. And mechanical harvest automatically makes a selection: unripe grapes, or overripe grapes are loft on the vine by the harvester, provided it is correctly tuned. But this is just one aspect.
Here is someone who argues that mechanical harvest is unquestionably better: WineBusiness. com
