Crush Time: Sun shines on winemakers

Impressive, but really early. This is what wineries are saying about the 2015 harvest. White and red wine grapes have been picked two to three weeks earlier than last year.

Mind you, winemakers don't often predict a poor vintage. A positive spin on expected wine quality is probably how they keep sleep-deprived cellar teams upbeat when multiple tanks of grape juice need fermenting and pressing.

Van Loveren, in Robertson, calls 2015 the "healthiest harvest of our lifetime", thanks to dry weather in previous months. Adi Badenhorst declares 2015 the earliest end to a Swartland harvest since 1994, beginning in the second week of January.

Swartland neighbour Mullineux Wines finished its harvest in record time.

But most wine regions are just past the halfway mark. Durbanville's Hillcrest picked its first reds last week. Some farms in cooler Elgin, and the Hemel en Aarde Valley, have just started. Ataraxia picked its farm-grown chardonnay only on February 20, talking about "ideal" conditions. Its bought-in sauvignon blanc, from Elgin, came in a week earlier.

Around the Winelands the message seems to be cautious optimism for a healthy and even "awesome" vintage.

To get into the stickier side of things,I attended Delheim's Start of Harvest celebration. Unlike the work done by professionals, harvest events are fun, easy-going and family-orientated.

After a relaxing lunch with a few glasses of wine, we formed teams and raced to carry grapes to a barrel then collectively foot-stomped the juice.

Delheim's 2015 winners produced 17.8litres of semillon juice. Our team stomped hard, but - oops - we were disqualified after an onlooker tipped in extra grapes.