Harvest machinery

Since the 1970s, the mechanisation of the grape harvest has seen steady growth. Machines have brought about a significant transformation of vineyards to optimise their use: the vines have been trained into a goblet shape and training systems conducive to mechanisation have become the norm: Royat cordons and trellised Guyot.
Grape-harvesting machines have become the norm as they offer flexibility in the harvest schedule and considerably reduce the labour burden. Their ongoing development has been supported by regular technical improvements, both in terms of the harvesting heads and ease of use, enabling very satisfactory quality levels to be achieved, although differences remain compared with manual harvesting (harvesting involving a liquid phase and a solid phase, removal of stalks, and the need to sort green waste).
Modern grape harvesters consist of a chassis for propulsion and transport, and a harvesting head.

• The chassis can be either self-propelled or towed.
• The harvesting head, meanwhile, is fitted with lateral shaking systems that apply sufficient force to the vine to detach the berries from their stalks. The grapes are then collected by conveyor belts or flexible bucket elevators, which transport the berries to hoppers.

One of the key features of modern grape harvesters isthe integration of an on-board destemmer and sorter. This equipment separates the grapes from the stalks and removes impurities directly during harvesting. This helps to improve the quality of the final product by reducing the presence of unwanted elements such as leaves and plant debris.
The quality of the harvest obtained using a grape-harvesting machine depends both on its settings and on how the vineyard has been prepared for its use. Shaking parameters, such as frequency, amplitude and pinch, must be adjusted according to the characteristics of the vines and the grapes.
Over 70 per cent of French vineyards are now mechanised, using machines developed by world-renowned French manufacturers.