Napa Valley Grape Harvest

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Grape harvesting in the Napa Valley has changed a lot since 1960.

For us, the 1960s was a period of change in harvesting grapes. We went from hauling individual redwood grape boxes to the winery to hauling the grapes in what were called grape gondolas.

Assuming that Napa Valley was not the first to use grape gondolas, I searched on “when were grape gondolas first used?” and got this response:

That response indicated to me that AI had summarized information from lots of different sources. IMHO, not a great summary, but it was the accompanying picture that blew me away! I mean like TOTALLY!

What did that couple have to do with grape gondolas? Only a handful of people reading this column will even know who they are before being told.

I knew them. Quite well as it turns out, but it took me a while to figure out why that picture was included under that topic.

A week later, another search with the same question returned this:

That last link is from a blog I wrote back in 2008, and that is where the picture of that couple came from. So, who are they?

That picture is of my mom and my dad on their wedding day.

I had forgotten about that blog and that specific post. I re-read it. There are a few things I would change, but it’s not bad. To find out about that picture, you’re going to have to click on this:

Piña Napa Valley: The Evolution of the Napa Valley Harvest

So why did that picture blow me away?

Nobody asked permission to use it. Can they do that?

And apparently, no human reviewed it to confirm it was even relevant to the topic, which it wasn’t in that first AI response.

It’s scary for me to think AI is referencing and presenting my past work in such a manner. Will information gathered from my Yountville Sun columns start showing up in these searches?

Moving on…

The definition of grape gondolas from AI:

“Grape gondolas are specialized vehicles designed for the efficient transport of grapes from vineyards to processing facilities. They are typically made from high-grade stainless steel, ensuring durability and food-safe properties.”

I didn’t care for that definition and would change that first line to:

“Grape gondolas are specialized trailers designed for the efficient transport of grapes…”

But these days, few grapes are transported to wineries in grape gondolas. It is much more common that grapes are hauled to wineries in plastic or steel bins that have been loaded onto trailers.

Back to the redwood grape boxes of the 1960s, the following is taken directly from my blog:

“When harvest rolled around, these boxes would be loaded on a ‘40s vintage flatbed truck, and spread in the vineyard the night before harvest. I still remember the sound the boxes made when they hit the ground. The next day, the pickers would fill the boxes and carry them to the end of the vine rows. There, they would be stacked, and the picker would use white chalk to write his number on the top box. As the truck moved through the vineyard to retrieve the filled boxes, the driver would note the number of boxes picked by each person. One man would place the boxes on the truck bed, as another stacked the boxes in neat rows. When the truck was loaded to capacity, the load would be tied down and the truck would head to a public scale, or winery, to be weighed. At the winery, the truck would pull up next to a grape “hopper” and the boxes would be dumped one-by-one into the grate covered box. A cleat conveyor would move the clusters into a crusher, where the berries were removed from the stems. The berries and juice (collectively called “must”) were then pumped into fermentation tanks; usually large redwood or concrete tanks during this time period. And so, the winemaking process began.”

This short and blurry old 8mm video shows the full grape boxes being loaded onto an old flatbed truck:

“This short video shows what grape harvest was like in Napa Valley in the 1960s. It was taken on the Mt. Eden Ranch, which later became the Plumpjack & Rudd properties. That was my dad, John Piña, Jr., in the long sleeve blue shirt. The ranch owner Constantine Ramsey was driving the truck.

Redwood grape (fruit) boxes were spread before picking started. As the boxes were filled, the picker wrote his/her number on the box in chalk and stacked them at the end of a row. The number of boxes each picker picked were recorded before they were manually loaded on a flatbed truck.

That white house with the red roof at the end of the video was our house.