How the Old Breed Made a Raisin. Part One

Victor Davis Hanson

Raisins are dried grapes. For 100 years, Sun-Maid Raisins, the local co-op, insisted on dried Thompson seedless grapes, the green, seedless grapes you saw once in the store fresh (though in their natural smaller state, without being pumped up from the effects of gibberellic acid, stump and cane girdling, and weekly irrigation drowning).

Recently new varieties have begun to replace the Thompson that ripen sooner, bear heavier, and may or may not taste better.

Much of the crop is now mechanically harvested. Modern vineyards are trellised on high arbors and planted three to four times as densely. But even on the new corporate plots many of the same principles remain.

In August, when the grape nears 20 brix (the measurement of sucrose), the farmer decides: pick now to get a good enough sweet raisin, and during the summer days before the chance of autumn rain. Or wait for 23-4 brix and a sweeter, heavier grape and better raisin, but one that might lay on the ground between the rows to mid or late September. Then the days shorten. The mornings bring dew. The humidity rises as the temperature drops. And the high pressure off the coast starts to weaken and let in storm clouds from the south.

Drying is not then 12 days but 21—if you are lucky. Raisin farmers then are gamblers, who wager whether to risk greater profits at the risk of no profits or play it safe and make something but not something big.

In the olden days, the farmer terraced the dirt on the twelve-foot rows, tilting the blade to make a slant toward the south. (Raisin vineyards were always planted east-west. North to south was a disaster, entailing an extra 5-8 days of drying).

The picker crawled down the row, slicing the bunches to fall into the pan. He then dumped the contents on paper trays facing the sun (formerly, pickers were required to use wood frames on the paper trays to ensure a heavy neat tray—that practice ended around 1965, as did wooden trays).

For his work, the picker wanted a light tray, to get more trays in the row given wages were paid by piece work. The farmer wanted a good 22-pound tray, the fewer the trays and the heavier, the less he paid for their harvesting.

A good worker might pick 250-400 trays a day. It was hot, nasty work. I hated every August when we picked grapes on the eve of school (delayed until after Labor Day to ensure enough student harvesters). It was hot, usually 100°-105° F, dirty and dusty. Yellowjackets and black widows sought refuge under the vine and appeared on leaves as you reached for the bunches. The knives were sharp and could cut a finger deeply. Sloppy farmers sometimes allowed puncture vines and sandburs into their vineyards, or Johnson grass. Weedy vineyards or too lush vines made you fight to see the bunches.

You often got stickers in your pants and cuts on your arms from the weed leaves. And dirt in your pants and dust, dirt and pollen in your nose and eyes. Any man who picked grapes, I thought, deserved some sort of exemption.