A Guide to Packing, Shipping and Moving Wine Grapes: a blog about the process for preparing grapes for shipping.

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Wine grapes are delicate, and damage can occur during shipping. Damage from rain is one possibility, and another is from animals. A good rule of thumb is to handle the grapes as little as possible prior to their being shipped.

When you receive your grapes, it is best to be prepared with a plan of what you’re going to do with them. It’s always a good idea to get a head start on the work involved in getting your grapes ready for harvest so that you don’t find yourself in a time crunch at the last minute.

In this article I’ll discuss how wine grapes are packed and shipped, how you can protect your grapes from sunburn and bird droppings, how to control the temperature in which they are stored and even how you can protect them from some insects.

Before you start the process of packing your grapes, you need to know how many boxes you will need and approximately how much space those grape boxes will take up. This information will help you plan for the number of trucks, drivers and forklift operators you will need. One of the first things you will want to do is to draw out a floor plan of your vineyard and plot where each vine is located on that map.

Trucking companies usually charge a fee based on the number of miles they drive to deliver your grapes. For example, this company charges $12 per mile after the first 100 miles are driven. If you are shipping from a location that is close to one of their warehouses and customers, this rate can be offset by the savings from not having to drive as far. A company like this might charge less for shorter distances than it does for longer ones. In other words, it could be cheaper for you if your grapes are closer to their warehouse than another customer’s grapes. You might check with other companies as well to see if they have similar policies or lower rates for local deliveries.

When calculating how many boxes you will need as well as how many miles each driver will drive, keep in mind that it may take more than one trip to deliver all

The process of packing grapes for shipping is a mix of art and science. It requires experience, good communication, and attention to detail. The quality of the grapes packed will determine the quality of the wine produced.

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We can pack your grapes in pallets or boxes, with or without plastic. We can ship them on your trucks or ours. We can load them onto your railroad cars or ours. We can store them at our facility if you need to wait for a specific date on which you know your winery will be ready to receive them, or we can deliver them directly to your winery. We can also help you determine if these services are best for you by making sample runs for you and studying production costs.\\\\\

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Whether shipping reds, whites, or fortified wines, our goal is the same: To ensure your grapes arrive in the best possible condition so that your wine production is highest quality and cost effective.

**How do you prepare grapes for shipping? There are two basic methods. The first is to pick the whole cluster, stems and all. Newer vineyards can be trellised so that the grapes can be picked without damaging them, but it’s harder to harvest this way. The main advantage of a whole cluster is that it leaves the grape clusters intact and allows the grower to ship more weight. This is important because shipping grapes is expensive. The downside is that you have a lot of dead weight in the form of stems, which are usually thrown away or used as compost.

The other popular method is called “destemming.” In this method, the grower cuts off the entire grape cluster just below where it joins with the stem. Destemming has several advantages. First, it makes harvesting easier because there are no stems to cut around or pull down from the trellis. Second, it means that you don’t have any stems to throw away or use as compost, both of which cost money. And finally, destemming makes for higher quality wine because you’re keeping more of the must (juice) inside the grape skins. BUT…destemming also means that you need to do something with all those grape stems, and it

As with most things the first step is finding a good place to store your grapes before they are ready to ship. If you have space and it is convenient these are the ones you want to look for. They are easy enough to find and rented at a fairly low cost. This will make all the difference in the world when it comes time to pack your grapes.

Chances are however your storage space is limited and you have no place that offers ideal conditions for storing grapes. If this is the case, look for places that offer protection from all sides, keep out critters and especially insects. Find a place that will hold humidity at near 100% as changes can cause bruising and cracking of grape skins which ends up in fermentation during shipping.

This leads us to another important factor, namely temperature. If you do not have an ideal storage area, then you need to be sure that whatever you choose will not change temperatures too much during shipping. This can cause uneven ripening or even cracking of grape skins which again leads to fermentation during shipping and loss of berries in transit.

If it is cold outside where you live, then you may want to consider adding insulation to your storage area such as Styrofoam or plastic sheeting or blankets etc. Be careful with blankets

Nurserymen find it necessary to keep their trees dormant most of the winter. There are several reasons for this. One is that it reduces the chances of root damage from freezing and thawing, and subsequent disease in the spring. Another is that it reduces the chance of frost damage on tender new buds and new growth. Dormant trees should be kept near 50 degrees at night, and around 70 during the day. The best time for moving dormant plants is early to mid February.

The first step in preparing vines for shipping is to remove all buds from the canes. Buds on vines are susceptible to damage from rough handling as they are being loaded onto trucks or while they are in storage at the receiving end. Buds on canes also make mechanical harvesting much more difficult and expensive, with a resulting loss of yield and quality.

After all buds have been removed, cut back each vine 6 inches above a leaf bud (and don’t forget to remove those!). This will give you a nice trim job for your vines, and reduce stress on them as well as making them easier to handle.

When you get ready to move your dormant vines, you will need to dig them up out of the ground first. You will want to start by digging one

There are many different methods of harvesting grapes. Each method has its advantages and disadvantages in terms of the quality of the fruit and the expense of harvesting.

The major methods for harvesting grapes are:

Hand picking: The fruit is picked directly from the vine. This method produces the best quality grapes, but it is also very expensive since it takes a lot of labor to harvest a significant number of pounds of fruit.

Picking with a mechanical harvester: This method is also known as “thinning”. It is a fast way of harvesting grapes, but it produces lower quality fruit than hand picking. The fruit cannot be used for fresh eating since the stems are still attached (except for Concord grapes which have their stems removed before shipping). The stems are often used to make grape juice or wine, but they produce lower quality juice/wine than if they were removed before crushing.

The third method is called “raking”. In this method, only the clusters are cut from the vines, and then placed in a machine called a “crusher-destemmer” which separates the fruit from the stems and leaves. This method produces low quality fruit that is often used to make grape juice or wine, but not much use for eating fresh.

There are several other

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