Picking wine grapes by hand

Most of the world's wine grapes now come off by machine, and current harvesters sort on board well enough that the quality argument has narrowed a great deal. It stays contested because the machines work by shaking, which breaks berries, and several appellations are built on whole intact bunches reaching the press. Champagne requires clusters to arrive at the pressing centre whole, which in practice means hands, and Châteauneuf-du-Pape requires hand harvesting outright. Steep slopes such as the Mosel and the Côte-Rôtie will not take a machine at all, and selective picking of botrytised or unevenly ripe fruit, in Sauternes and in Tokaj, is a judgment made bunch by bunch and sometimes berry by berry.