Chapter 18
ALESSIA
Harvest ends with a celebration—but starts with a decision, based on an accumulation of information.
Sugar climbs faster than expected.
Acids hold when they shouldn’t.
Seeds turn brown, not green.
Skins thicken, tannins resolve, and flavors finally align with the data you have from previous vintages.
And then one day, you know it’s time.
The fruit has crossed from promise into consequence, and the next sunrise will take over your life.
Harvest is both fruition and judgment—the reckoning of every decision made since pruning.
For the next four to six weeks, nothing else will matter.
This is the most exhilarating time in a vineyard, and I love it all—the moment we commit to the pick, the first bins arriving in the early morning light, and the urgency as fruit moves from vine to cellar.
Harvest is where the vineyard stops speaking in theory and starts speaking in wine. The story continues in the fermenters—through maceration, extraction, and time—then narrows again into barriques, and eventually, into a bottle.
But everything that wine will ever be is already present at harvest. We don’t create it—we only decide how carefully to listen to what it’s telling us.
“Well?” Edam asks.
Hortensio raises his hand. “Shh.”
“Yeah, Edam,” Lucia mocks teasingly. “Be quiet while she does what she does.”
I roll my eyes. “You know I’m doing science here, not magic?”
Edam shakes his head. “Data is one thing, but what you do, Alessia, that’s magic.”
Hortensio shrugs, nodding. “He’s right.”
We’re standing at the edge of the Chardonnay block just after dawn, boots damp with dew, the vineyard holding its breath.
This parcel always speaks first among the whites, even in years that test patience.
I have a refractometer in my hand, ready to confirm what I already know about when we’ll start harvesting.
The sky is pale, scrubbed clean by the night wind off the Tyrrhenian. Behind us, the Colline Metallifere rises in muted folds—slowing storms, shaping air, forcing the sea breeze to lift and cool before it reaches the vines.
I split a berry between my fingers and squeeze a single drop of juice onto the glass prism. Close the lid. Tilt it to the light.
“Twenty-four point one,” I announce.
That number isn’t just sugar. It’s potential alcohol. It’s how far the sun has pushed the fruit. Chardonnay will give you elegance or flab depending on when you decide it’s ready. Wait too long, and you lose the spine. Move too early and you sacrifice depth. Timing is everything.
Lucia takes notes on her iPad.
I unclip the handheld pH meter from my belt and test the juice again. “pH is holding,” I add. “Acids are still alive.”
That’s a relief.
Acidity is the fight—especially in warm years—and this year has been nothing but that.
Spring came early and unevenly.
Flowering was irregular.
Then came the heat when we didn’t want it, followed by the wind that stripped moisture just as the vines were setting fruit.
This year was pressure.
The heat forced decisions. Stress demanded discipline. Nothing was taken from us without warning. Every cut we made was deliberate. Every cluster dropped was chosen.
There’s a difference between devastation and sacrifice, and the vines know it.
So, we’ve had fewer berries and thicker skins.
Concentration born not of abundance, but of restraint.
The vines had to struggle, and so did we.
Warm years test judgment. They punish impatience. They reward those willing to wait, to risk less volume for more character. This is not a vintage that forgives shortcuts or vanity. It insists on attention—on being met where it is, not where we wish it was.
Yes, when they talk about this vintage, they’ll call it a challenging one—one where more was demanded of us, and those who delivered got more in return.
The wines that come from years like this are rarely easy. They’re structured. Intense. They take time to open. But when they do, they last.
I run my hand along the vine, feeling the wood, the scars from pruning, the quiet endurance of it.
Yes, this may not be the vintage anyone wanted, but I have a feeling this is what we needed. This vintage is going to differentiate the good winemakers from the great—and I intend to deliver some of the best wines to the market.
Edam tastes a grape straight from the cluster, chews slowly. “Seeds are mostly brown. Skins are there.”
“I know,” I reply. “Tannins are ripe, but they haven’t tipped. Not yet.”
We don’t decide harvest on one thing alone. Not numbers. Not taste. Not instinct. It’s the alignment that matters—refractometer readings, lab data, berry sampling across parcels, the way the skins resist before they break, the way the juice coats the tongue instead of running thin.
I look down the row. The vines are heavy now, no longer flirting with ripeness.
They are…ready.
I straighten.
“Tomorrow,” I declare.
Lucia looks up from her note-taking and smiles. She raises her iPad like it’s a sword. “We will take Chardonnay tomorrow at first light.”
Hortensio and Edam shout. “First, we take Chardonnay.”
“And maybe the Vermentino, too,” Hortensio adds.
“Let me assess the Vermentino before you put your sticky fingers on it,” I caution, shaking my head.
The whites always lead. They’re picked fast and cold, before the sun can soften their spine.
“Two weeks of dawn picks,” I confirm. “All the whites, while they still remember the night—straight to press, no bruising, no heat.”
Lucia taps her tablet. “Then Merlot—lower blocks, before the sugars start getting clever.”
Hortensio sighs. “Merlot shouldn’t be tricky, but it is.”
“The pulp is already generous,” I say. “But the seeds are still green. I won’t take plush fruit without the tannins to carry it. So, we wait a couple of days on that.”
Lucia goes through her list. “And the Cab Franc?”
I glance toward the cab blocks farther down. “We reassess parcel by parcel as soon as Chardonnay’s in. If the nights stay cool, we can hold. If they don’t, we move.”
Cabernet Franc lies if you let the sun get to it. So we must pick it cold, at dawn, when the aromatics are still lifted—before the fruit tips into sweetness.
Cabernet Sauvignon is our anchor and the last to come in, as it has the longest hang time and the thickest skins.
Matteo calls it “the most patient varietal.”
Lucia types quickly. “So, Chardonnay first. Vermentino second. Then once you give us the go ahead, we’ll get to the Merlot. Then Cab Sav and Cab Franc—parcel by parcel.”
“Yes,” I say.
I’m anxious. Maybe even a little nervous. That’s healthy—because when it comes to winemaking, confidence can sharpen your judgment, but hubris will kick your ass.
A good harvest requires a whole lot of preparation, and we are prepared.
Every tank has been sterilized and rinsed twice.
Hoses have been flushed three times.
The pumps have been meticulously tested.
For most wines, we’ll use gentle remontage when we pump over fermenting juice from the bottom of a tank and spray it over the top. For our premier cuvée—Altèra—we rely on gravity alone. No force. No shortcuts.
Harvest and fermentation go hand in hand as you start macerating grapes and fermenting them as soon as they’re picked.
But first, we sort the grapes. Twice.
The first pass is rough—hands and eyes, removing leaves, sunburned clusters, anything that doesn’t belong. The second is surgical. Individual berries. No compromises.
This is why every picker we use is rigorously trained for Pietra Alta. I don’t care what other estates do—we do it only one way here, and that’s my way.
Our pickers know how to handle clusters without tearing skins, how to leave compromised fruit behind, and how to recognize sunburn and rot without needing to be told.
Green harvest and sorting aren’t separate philosophies for me; they’re part of the same ethos.
Respect the fruit at every stage—or don’t touch it at all.
How I do it is slow and expensive, but that’s because vines are unforgiving. You don’t correct greatness later, you protect it now.
“Well, everyone, that’s the next weeks of our lives all planned out!” Lucia announces.
I let out a quiet laugh. “That’s the way we like it, don’t we?”
Hortensio and Edam give a thumbs-up sign.
Lucia closes her tablet. “Alright, team—it’s time.” She glances around the circle, meeting every pair of eyes. “So, chest out, fear in your pocket.”
We instinctively step closer, drawing into a tight ring, stacking our palms in a central pillar of skin and bone before snapping our hands skyward with a rhythmic shout. “Andiamo a fare il vino. Let’s go make wine!”
As we step apart, everyone’s already going through their to-do lists in their heads.
We’ve been preparing for harvest for months and more intensely for the past few weeks.
Everyone knows what they must do. Execution is now the key, and there’s no time to waste because the vineyard has just dropped waiting.
As she walks off along with Edam and Hortensio, I turn my head toward the Vermentino blocks, the leaves catching the first clean edge of morning light.
From tomorrow on, the vines won’t belong to the field anymore—they’ll belong to the wine.
Tonight, the cellar smells like nothing at all.
Tomorrow, it will smell like crushed berries and promise.
Soon, trucks that have been idling for days will finally turn over.
The picking crews—some local, some seasonal workers we’ve hired year after year—will begin to arrive from the cottages at the edge of the estate tonight.
It’s finally happening, I think, feeling almost like I have drunk a little too much.
It always feels like this—like a held breath finally released.
I call Matteo.
“It’s time,” he says even before I say hello.
“Yes,” I reply. “We start tomorrow morning.”
I rattle out the numbers: pH, acid, sugar, and the other data points that helped me make my decision.
“When I was your age,” he muses, “I would’ve waited—even with those acids. Your judgment surpasses mine.”
“Hortensio would have my head if I waited,” I joke. That might be dramatic—but from my mild-mannered lab rat, a sharp lecture would feel just as lethal. “He’s been running cross-parcel comparisons all week.”
"I’ve been following the reports.” His voice sounds a little thinner than usual.
“How are you feeling?” I ask, careful.
“Oh, fine. A little tired. That’s all. Harvest does that, even when you’re not in the vines.”
I look out over the rows that are waiting to be relieved of their burden.
“I wish you were here,” I say quietly.
“I am,” he answers. “In all the ways that matter.”
We talk a while longer before ending the call.
As I walk to the cellar to check everything there, I call Nico.
“Dolcezza,” he answers on the first ring.
“We start tomorrow,” I tell him giddily. “Will you come?”
Pause.
Cristo! Am I being too demanding?
He’s busy, I know that. He’s running a large company, and his time isn’t his own.
Before I can take my words back, he replies, “I will. I need a few days, but I’ll be there. Maybe help you pick grapes?”
“Signore, you need to be trained first,” I tease him.
He chuckles. “You sound happy, Alessia.”
He sounds exhausted, but I don’t say that. That sounds like something a wife would say, and it makes me uncomfortable even though I am technically and now Biblically his wife.
“I love this,” I confess. “You know it’s so exciting when the bins are filled, weighed, tagged by parcel, and loaded onto trucks.”
“I’ve never heard anyone this thrilled about binning grapes.”
I stop and look at the vines that go all the way down to the sea. “Everything,” I murmur, “is filled with anticipation. And the precision with which we have to work is…well, as delicious as the wine we make.”
“You make precision sound very romantic, cara.” I hear the amusement in his voice, but there is also pride.
He’s told me more than once that he finds me an exemplary winemaker.
That he’s never seen someone who leads as I do.
It’s a balm for my ego, battered by years of hearing my father call my work and me an experiment.
“For a winemaker, precision is everything.”
I reach the cellar and look around. Soon, the sorting tables will hum with life. Hands will move fast, discarding what doesn’t belong, protecting what does.
“You’re going to be too busy for me,” he says, “and I already miss you.”
My heart stutters at his admission. “I’ll make it up to you after harvest, I promise. But….”
“But?” he prompts.
“It would be very nice if you’d hold me at night after a long day—even if I am able to sleep only a few hours.” I can’t believe how quickly he’s become so important to me. “I sleep better when you’re in bed with me.”
“It would be my honor, dolcezza.”
“Grazie, Nico.”
“Prego, mia cara.”
I can hear love and affection in his voice.
He hasn’t said the words to me, but I haven’t said them to him either. I can feel them though.
No matter what this vintage brings, what it can’t take away from me is this sense of euphoria, of finally having someone who is mine, who loves and cares for me.