Harvest at RayLen can last as long as six weeks, but this year Shepard predicts that it will be finished sooner because the summer has been warm and until recently, dry. RayLen started its harvest this year on Aug. 27. By Sept. 9, it was working on merlot. "Everything's coming in faster," Shepard said.
At RayLen, 12 to 15 workers uses small clippers to snip each ripe bunch, then drop them lightly into five-gallon plastic buckets. Blanketed by the humid air, the vineyards are quiet except for the sound of the harvest -- the grunt of a loader as it gathers up yards of black netting covering the ripe fruit and the rhythm of the workers harvesting.
The pickers work their way down the rows of vines, vivid green tangles calmed into order by a system of wires and wooden posts. The workers fill one bucket, then pick up an empty one as two men move behind them, dumping the filled buckets into large gray plastic bins. They'll pick from about 7:30 a.m. until late afternoon, stopping earlier if they finish one variety of grape or if it starts to rain.
RayLen makes European-style wines with 10 varieties of vinifera grapes. Shepard will use the grapes picked this month for the 2008 vintage of Carolinius, Category 5 and Eagle's Select, three of the winery's red blends, in addition to a wine made with just merlot.
Chardonnay is the most widely planted vinifera grape in the state, followed by cabernet sauvignon. North Carolina grape growers harvested 4,580 tons of grapes in 2006, the most recent numbers that are available.
But to winemakers more is not always better. They try to strike a balance between quantity and quality, and that can mean harvesting less than an acre can yield. At RayLen, workers went over the vines during verasion (when young green grapes turn color, in late summer), dropping bunches on the ground. The idea is that the vines will channel their growing energy into the remaining grapes, ultimately making a wine that has more body and flavor.
The average yield in North Carolina was 3.5 tons per acre in 2006. Shepard wants his vines to produce roughly 2 to 4 tons per acre. "If you left it all on, you're going to end up with 8 tons per acre," he said.
As the grapes ripen, vineyard workers unfurl giant rolls of netting over the vines to protect the fruit from birds. About a week before harvest, they go through the vines, picking off damaged fruit and cleaning up the vineyard for the harvest.
As the grapes head into harvest, Shepard keeps track of the fruit's ripeness, walking through the rows and taking random samples, picking and tasting grapes, testing their sugar levels, watching their color and looking at their seeds. If the seeds are brown, the grapes are ready, or very close to it. Green seeds mean they need more time.
Shepard spends more time this part of the year on the phone with other area winemakers. They sell, trade and buy grapes from each other, and many of them are ready at the same time.
And he watches the weather. Higher temperatures mean that the grapes are going to ripen faster. There's no picking in the rain -- it could get in the buckets and the bins, and that would water down the wine -- but damp grapes will dry in the trailer. Enough rain at harvest time can plump up the grapes and dilute their juice, though this can be counteracted when the weather gets drier by letting the grapes hang a little longer on the vine.
Early fall in North Carolina also happens to be during the end of hurricane season, the time of the year that has spawned monsters such as Katrina, Hugo and Fran, the state's geographic cross to bear that vineyards in California don't have to worry about.
RayLen has turned hurricane season into a marketing opportunity. In 2003, Shepard blended the vineyard's five red varieties of grapes in a wine the vineyard staff named after the most dangerous class of hurricanes: Category 5.
It's appropriate to harvest time, Shepard said. And it's an acknowledgement to Mother Nature. "We have found that ever since we made it there hasn't been a hurricane category 5 landfall," he added.
So far, North Carolina and the Yadkin Valley have escaped much of the worst hurricane wrath this year, though conditions can vary from vineyard to vineyard.
"Gustav was the only one," Shepard said, looking out over the vines. "We had just started harvest and we had about 3½ inches of rain. The beauty of red clay, when it's dry, it's like a brick. Most of the rain you get like that just runs off. That's also why we like to be on a slope. Some gets in, but we needed rain."
In the vineyard, bucket after bucket go into the gray bins. They can hold 800 to 1,000 pounds of grapes. Full, they're hauled up to the winery with a small tractor, then weighed and tucked into a refrigerated trailer for storage.
The grapes that RayLen presses for its own use don't stay in the trailer long. Shepard likes to have them crushed within 24 hours.
Francisco Montellano, the vineyard manager, uses a forklift to hoist up the merlot grapes, picked the day before, into a machine that crushes and de-stems them. The bins are groaning with grapes, and as Montellano tilts the bins, the grapes tumble out, followed by a trickle of juice.
The crusher-destemmer is a sleek silver series of hoppers and boxes. It can chew through a bin of grapes in about five minutes, spitting out stems and pinching the grapes with rubber rollers, then pushing them into a long white hose that connects through a wall into the winery.
"If you mess with it too much, you could crush the seed, which could make the wine bitter," Shepard said. "We just want to break that skin so the juice can start flowing."
Like blood pumping through a giant artery, the grapes and juice push through the hose into a tall, stainless-steel tank for fermentation. The grapes will spend 12 to 15 days there before they get strained and pressed. Juice from the fermentation and the pressing will go into separate oak barrels for aging and later, blending.
Outside, the air smells of sweet, smashed fruit. One worker hoses down the empty bins. Montellano stacks them to the side with the forklift. Another worker empties another bin holding the grape stems. From time to time, he trickles a stream of liquid sulfur dioxide from a jug into the grapes as they're crushed. The sulfur dioxide kills the grapes' yeast. Shepard will add cultured yeast later while the grapes sit in the fermentor -- giving him more consistency and control over the wine.
This part of the harvest is not hard work, Montellano said, compared to the winter months, when all 38 acres of RayLen's vines have to be pruned by four men.
This year, Shepard said, RayLen's harvest is a little below average in yield, though things look better than last year. Winemakers and experts predict that the 2007 vintage will be a good year for Yadkin Valley wines because the summer was hot and dry, but there won't be a lot of it -- an Eastertime freeze that year killed many grapes just as they were budding.
It meant that winemakers had less fruit to work with. RayLen typically makes 8,000 to 10,000 cases of wine a year. Last year it was 4,500, Shepard said.
"In 2007 the quality was there but not the quantity," he said. "This year, it's a trade-off. We got some quality, but some quantity, too. So the wineries might see some benefit."
"When I bring in the grapes, that's what I've got to work with that year. That's farming. It's high tech, but it's out of your control. Mother Nature's in charge. All you can do is try to skirt around her."