An essential phase in grape ripening is what the French call le véraison. For lack of a better one, many other languages use the same word. Véraison means that the grapes change to their final colour.
It takes place around the turn of the month, July-August. The red grapes go from green to dark blue, and the white grapes become more transparent. The weather must stay sunny and dry to enable the grapes to change their colours as homogenous as possible. Now, that does not always happen, as Kay Bochard at Quinta do Tedo in the Douro Valley tells us on her blog:
“Since we have 20+ red varieties growing in our Tedo vineyards that undergo vérasion at slightly different times, a vineyard walk at this time of the year brings surprises – some clusters a tapestry of green, pink, red and purple, while others are green. To think that one day they will all share the dark indigo/purple Douro grape colour palette is almost hard to believe.”
See her beautiful and illustrative photos of le véraison here: Kay’s blog
One Response
This is such a good post on grape ripening. Thanks for sharing