Sure, you’ve imagined what it must be like to be in a wine growing valley during harvest, but what does it really look like?  One common sight besides vines filled with Charonnay, Pinot Noir and Syrah: dirty cars.  Wine growers drive from vineyard to vineyard collecting grapes to taste and analyze for ripeness.  With no time and plenty of dirt, our cars often look like this:

Then of course, there are the contents of the car: flagging tap, sun hats, nice clothes for dinner with a customer, zip lock bags to hold grapes, pruning shears, etc., etc., etc.:

As we walk the vineyard we taste, examine seed color (general browness means general goodness), chew on the skins (how do the tannins change?), and get a gut feel for overall flavor.  Then of course we bring the grapes back to the winery to examine sugar and acid to compliment our impressions by taste: