It’s Harvest Time

A harvest tool used for both culling and picking grapes is known as a grape hook knife. Grape ripening begins with veraison, or as many refer to it as the growth period. The small, hard, green berries transform into what we would recognize as grapes. The grapes lose their bright green color and begin to increase in size and soften. All grapes in the vineyard don’t go through veraison at the same time; in fact, the entire bunch might not even be ready at the same time since grapes exposed to more warmth and sun change faster than those in cooler and shadier places. The vineyard manager or winemaker will sometimes thin the crop or conduct what is called a green harvest during the growth period where unripe bunches are cut from the vines to either speed ripening, allowing the vines resources to go to the remaining bunches of grapes.

The actual picking of the grapes above the equator usually happens between August and November and below the equator between February and April. But the exact dates vary according to the grape variety, wine style, region. The period of time is usually 30 to 70 days after veraison. Hotter climates have shorter cycles, while cooler climates typically have longer ripening cycles. The exact timing of harvest depends on the winemaker’s instinct or a hunch, the region, the grape variety, and the year’s climate. The timing and actual date of harvest are seldom the same from one year to the next. The vintner usually selects the harvest date based on his/her testing of the grapes.

In France harvest time is known as le vendange. Consider the volume of grapes that will need to be picked during this short harvest phase. Throughout history this picking of the grapes was completed by handwork. One can imagine that picking knives would get dull and needed sharpening or honing as it is called. So, field workers would need to carry a sharpening stone and other tools to keep their equipment in working order. Their individually handmade field tool holder was necessary. It has only been since the 1960s that mechanized picking is done, mostly on larger vineyard properties or hillside vineyards. One thing to remember is that the mechanized grape harvesters are less gentle. Harvesting can require a week to over a month of hard labor and in many cases done during the night or at dawn, when it is coolest outside.

Soon after the picking is done, … very soon, the grapes go to the winery to be sorted for quality. The French have contributed a term for this also and it is commonly known as triage. This is where the people doing the sorting look over the clusters; they would choose the good from the inferior grapes. Today, this process might be done on a conveyor belt where the bad grapes get shaken. But here again, technology is taking the place of humans and an optic sensor recognizes anything that doesn’t have the right size, shape, and color.

Some people believe that grape crushing is done by stomping on the grapes and in some cultures grapes are still stomped on, but it is less common today. In the past after the grapes were possibly destemmed by hand, they were put into a press to separate the juice from the skins. Then came the crushing and fermenting part of the harvest process. A tool utilized in the winery for this process was called a wine cap axe or coupe-marc. These were early, refined tools used for separating the wine cap from the grape press sides. They also put the separation of the mash, a technical term, back to the center of the press for more juice.

Harvest Tools from the Wine History Project Collection

The Wine History Project of San Luis Obispo County collection has examples of these three implements and that is what I will discuss in this article.

For centuries this type of knife was used in grape growing regions of the world. The knife was used to cull grapes midway through the growing season, limiting the crop and concentrating the flavor of the grapes. This is referred to as culling the crop or dropping crop. Alternatively, it was used to remove clusters of grapes during the vendange (Fr.) or wine harvest when the grapes were ripe. The tool was known as a grape hook, picking knife or vine knife; there being a very small hook for cutting the bunches of grapes from the vine.

Winemakers and vineyard managers will identify the rows of grapes which are ripe and ready to be picked. If hand harvesting, these special knives with the curved blades will assist the vineyard worker to cut the clusters of grapes from the vines and drop them into pans, moving the pans along the ground as they go. When the pan is filled with grapes and hopefully keeping material other than grapes out of the pans, someone from the harvest crew or the pickers themselves will carry the pan to a large open trailer, or gondola, which is usually parked at the end of the row.

Pickers often customized the blades of their knives, adjusting the length of the blade, changing the arc of the curve, or sharpening it to suit their particular work style. Usually, the handle was wood, and the blade was metal with the side that curves inwards well-sharpened. In more recent years, the handle is hard plastic. The name may come from “small sickles”. There are three different “models” of these knives in our collection.

To ensure that the cuts remain effective and not blunt, the tool will usually be rubbed against sharpening stones. This is explained in the next of these harvest tools.

Field workers from farms to vineyards would create these containers, these primitive items to hold a sharpening stone, anvil to sharpen a sickle, or vine knife. The holders would be fastened to their belt and the originality of the method to hold it at one’s waist was part of the uniqueness of the container. Many workers carved special holes on the back of the body of the implement, or they attached a leather strap, or hung the holder by an iron loop off their belt. The body of the object was large enough to hold sharpening stones for the tools they used that would need constant resharpening for these rusty blades. The materials they chose to create these primitive holders were also unique to the design: wood, metal, leather, horns, etc. Some put a lot of thought into designing their holders and created folk-art pieces. Others would just nail some old wood together to hold their items. I have observed that most were utilized during the mid- to late-nineteenth centuries. However, some have been found to be used as late as the mid-1950s.

To make your blades sharper is to sharpen, to keep the blade that way is to hone. Honing a knife maintains an already sharp edge. When one hones, one polishes the rough surface of the knife’s edge which reduces friction and allows the knife to cut better. Because this honing needed to be completed in the vineyard, pickers would carry a stone and this would be one of the items to carry in a field tool holder. You will note that one of the Wine History Project field tool holders comes complete with a stone.

Long-handled, short-handled and no handle pomace cutters were uniquely crafted by a toolmaker to fit the needs of a particular winemaker or winery worker. The edge-tool maker or le taillandier, manufactured or repaired sharp objects used in agriculture. These tools which are in our collection were mostly created during the nineteenth century and were designed to deal with the solid remains of grapes (pomace) left in a wine press.

Pomace is the solid residue, primarily skins, seeds, and stem left behind after juicing or fermenting grapes. Also referred to as a wine cap axe, a coupe-marc, or a grand coupe-marc these were used for cutting up the marc or residue from wine presses. The separation was put back into the center of the press for more juice, by punching down the cap, or chapeau of the fermenting wine in the tank. The fermenters were usually only filled halfway. If full the wine would have spilled over as the carbon dioxide expanded. The chemical process is this: the wine is “cooked”, and the grape juice converts the sugar to alcohol. These same types of tools were used in apple growing regions of countries in making cider.

Wine Cap Axe WHP-CT19A has the maker’s mark of Laurent Remy. Laurent Remy (1824-1836) was a toolmaker with the location of the shop identified as 15 Cour de Harlay, Paris. The Harlay court (Cour de Harlay) was an old court, first called “Cour Neuve” surrounded by shops for merchants. The court was accessible from the rue de Harlay, located in the Cite district on the Ile de la Cite.

Wine Cap Axe WHP-CT66A might have been used in Belleville, France, which was always a working-class neighborhood. By the time it was annexed to Paris in the 1860s, Belleville was already heavily populated. Belleville was sandwiched within four Paris arrondissements (districts) – the 10th, 11th, 19th, and 20th and was a wine-making village, independent from Paris, located outside the walls surrounding the city. It was especially popular for its guinguettes, or country cafes. Supposedly, Parisians would go on Sundays to Belleville because there was plenty of tax-free wine.

Wine Cap Axe WHP-CT123 is marked or decorated with a series of cuts into the surface as incised symbols on the blade (as shown). I attempted to research what the symbols meant, but I could not find any reference that explained their meaning. Beune, now known as Beaune, and recognized as the wine capital of Burgundy in eastern France, is a walled city centered on the wine industry. It was already a prosperous wine-growing region by the thirteenth century.

Wine Cap Axe WHP-CT127 resembles a medieval battle weapon with its termite-eaten long stick, that is attached to a 15-inch hand-forged knife-like sword.

Wine Cap Axe WHP-CT128 has the maker’s mark of Bordelaise, Groh. Bettzers. Bordelaise is a sauce typically made with red wine. And, the origin of the tool was provided to us as the Rhone Region of France which is one of the most prominent areas for red wine production in the country. This Rhone Valley is a key wine-producing region in the southeast of France and follows the Rhone River between Lyon and the Rhone Delta near the Mediterranean coast. During the 1800s, Syrah from this valley was sold to Bordeaux and Burgundy to help improve their wines, giving them more structure, backbone, and darker color. Near the end of the nineteenth century, Phylloxera devastated the Rhone Valley vineyards: in fact, it was first discovered in the Rhone Valley. A tidbit of historical information: For quite some time after the devastation from Phylloxera the growers were able to make more money planting apricots and cherries than they could earn from their vineyards.

Maker’s Marks

Tool maker’s marks traditionally have played an important role in the manufacturing process as they identified the maker of the tool and stood as a permanent promise of quality and workmanship. In some cases, these maker’s marks are the only way to identify the origin of a tool. The marks can be whimsical and ornate, or simple and no-nonsense. Almost all trades used some form of edge-tool and many of them showed their wide range of tools in their pattern books. Or, they would make tools to special order either as one-offs, small batches or for a patent holder. The appearance of these marks varies due to the pressure applied when the mark was made, affected by the surface it was punched on. Also, wear-and-tear on the tool could alter the appearance of the mark.

From the Georges Dos Santos Collection

Beginning in 1995, he traveled around the world for several years and when he returned to France he opened a wine cellar. According to Terre de Vins article from April 2019, “Georges Dos Santos a wine merchant from Lyon, France owns three establishments starting in 2001”. By 2003, he was named the best wine merchant in France. He is Portuguese born and finds the history of wine “most interesting.” He is known as a collector of all things wine.

He had an incredible collection of wine-related antiques and artifacts; which he rented out to exhibits, events, as props, and also sold some of the items to museums. By 2005 he decided to sell his collection to an eccentric antique dealer/collector in Napa Valley, California. Eventually the collector realized that the collection was “expensive to house” and could not manage the collection well. By 2009, the entire collection that was originally amassed by Georges Dos Santos went to auction. Jim McCormick (who we obtained many of the items which are now a part of the Wine History Project collection) was, as he told me, “in the front row with my paddle up a lot!” So that’s how we came to have so many French tools now in our collection.