Triage

If you are making a posh wine, you do not want any unripe or overripe berries to be pressed along with the good ones – and as for leaves, twigs, and bits of slug, well, they have really got to go. That is why the grapes will be tipped out onto a conveyor belt as they arrive at the winery and sorted, often by hand. This, as you might imagine, is a time-consuming and expensive process, especially in a country like Australia, where even winery workers are paid a decent wage (obviously not as true in places like Argentina or Eastern Europe, where labour comes cheap). Therefore, a certain amount of money is now being invested in developing mechanical triage machines.