The moon filled on Thursday September 7 and the sky was bright with its disk. It made us want to go to Glos and harvest under its light, but the grapes were not quite ready, and there was a dinner to go to, with guests from out of town…

But by Saturday, we could wait no longer. The southern section of Glos ripens much more quickly than the northern section. Chuck McDowell, son of the man who planted the vineyard and tended it until his death, told us that this was not surprising: the soil under the southern section was all sand, whereas deep loam underlay the northern vines. The sand accelerates the ripening because it holds no water, and this is good for the fruit but hard on the vines. So there is much less fruit in the sand. Sarah marked the break from ripe south to unripe north at row 26. She made a careful census of the vines and marked 25 of them for us to harvest. We began a little after dusk and finished our task around 10 pm, a half-hour after moonrise. We brought in about 300 lbs of grapes. I pressed them the next day and produced 71 liters of juice.

We think that it is very good that fruit from Glos marks the beginning of harvest for us.