Yet another very fine day, as you can see from this picture of Grand Prébois taken this morning:

At Beaucastel, we are picking Mourvèdre grapes today, using both the big and small teams (a total of 85 people).
The winery looks like an ant’s nest. There are all these people in the Beaucastel vineyards, and the grapes flow in, and cannot be kept waiting.
To make things more complicated, we are de-vatting the tanks that were filled at the start of harvest. We run off the wine that flows freely from the vat after fermentation, and then rake out the solid matter to produce the press wine. We do not use the latter in our blends. The residual solid matter, or marc, is taken to the distillery.

La cuve , asséchée, après l'écoullage du vin de goutte...

...Gérard (inside the vat)...

... and Franck rake out the “marc” which will be pressed to obtain press wine!