Halloween Special: What's in your Wine?

I've been sorting a lot of grapes lately, and let me show you some of the stuff that we've been removing from the fruit bins that come in from vineyards all over California. Yes, it's quite disgusting and that's the point.  Halloween should be about bugs, critters, snakes, etc.!

Occasionally we see some small wolf spiders.
They're quick and tend to run away quite fast

We get a lot more spiders that look like this.  They're slower and tend to
end up in the de-stemmer. I guess they don't have much flavor

Earwigs are everywhere in grape bins. We can't remove them all,
and most end up in the must.  Yum!

We also see a few green, leaf-like bugs like this.  We try to take them
out because they're kinda cool looking!

I've only seen one grasshopper since I've been sorting grapes.  I set it free.
I don't know how well it's doing in central Oakland...

Ladybugs are often in our bins, but we try to remove them because they're cute

We get to sort our grapes because we produce premium wines (with the premium prices).  Bargain wineries don't sort their grapes. They just dump everything into a de-stemmer and crush the crap out of it. If you're drinking cheapo wine, you're probably drinking the occasional mouse, tarantula, hummingbird (we've seen them caught in grape bins), snake, etc. Happy Halloween!!