The French connection: A toast to triage

Did you know that today in France, just as they have done for hundreds of years, many vineyards are harvested by hand? That’s right—the pickers carry baskets called hottes on their backs, pick the grapes and then deliver the grapes to a sorting table. 

“There, the grapes are sorted, and the best are destined to become the winemaker’s premium vintage,” says Jim Sperk of the Northern Ohio Wine Guild. “Perhaps lesser clusters will create a blend, and the least desirable grapes get placed in a big crock or barrel to be addressed later, after the primary grapes have progressed well in the fermentation process.”

Those leftover grapes will most likely end up, about a month later, as nouveau wine produced to reward the pickers and celebrate the harvest. 

“The grape sorting process is known as triage,” Jim says. “If that word sounds familiar, you may have heard it before on an old episode of M*A*S*H. Triage is a French word meaning ‘sorting’ or ‘selection.’ During triage in a critical medical setting, the medical staff quickly responds to a group of wounded patients to determine who needs the most attention. Those determined to have lesser injuries can wait for treatment.”

Triage as a medical process was borrowed from grape sorting and first used during the Napoleonic Wars in the early 1800s. Dr. Dominique-Jean Larrey employed the triage system to treat soldiers during that time. 

“Dr. Larrey also developed other methods, such as efficient amputation, to save lives,” Jim says. “Dr. Larrey is known today as the ‘Father of Military Medicine,’ and his name is inscribed in the south pillar of the Arc de Triomphe in Paris, France.”

Historians link triage, the life-saving medical assessment technique, to the simple task of harvesting grapes for vineyards to allocate resources to the grapes that will ensure the highest-quality product and use the damaged grapes for the lower quality wines. 

“Vineyards do use machines to sort grapes, but many are returning to the manual triage technique,” Jim says. “There’s nothing like the human eye to determine quality.”

For information about the Northern Ohio Wine Guild, contact Jim Sperk at tinymoonwines@usa.net.