Mechanical harvesting of grapes has been one of the major changes in many vineyards in the last third of a century. First introduced commercially in the 1960s, it has been adopted for different reasons in different wine regions.
In New York State, mechanization was implemented for potential cost savings. In Australia, the availability of labor was a major motivating factor. "In France, the increasing bureaucracy and costs involved in employing people even temporarily added allure to machine harvesting in the 1980s and 1990s."
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There are a number of potential obstacles to the use of mechanical harvesting. They include small individual vineyard parcels, steep terrain, and narrow widths between rows of vines. However, the majority of studies report that mechanical harvesting has no negative effects on wine quality and, under certain circumstances, may actually have a positive effect.
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