I’ve always been fascinated by photos of night-time Wine Country Harvest. Usually the photos capture workers in the vineyard picking by hand with lights strapped to their foreheads, tubs at their feet and that awfully sharp and speedy picking knife working away. The crew is always bundled up against the chill, and lights illuminate gondolas of freshly picked grapes. In our case, we harvest most of our vineyard by machine, so the photos I capture are dramatic with the shining bright lights from the harvester. 

Kate and I went out one morning about 6 a.m. when our machine harvester was picking Chardonnay. The vineyard team starts at 4:30 a.m., but we weren’t quite that ambitious. Even at 6 a.m., it was very dark and chilly.

The real challenge is to get the photos that we want to share with you and manage to stay out of their way! We were able to do that, so here are some of our favorite shots from that early morning and a few hours later.