Green Drop is a winegrowing process we use at Kendall-Jackson to ensure that we’re picking only the highest quality grapes to go into our wines. Essentially, we are attempting to reduce the variability in the ripening of the fruit in a given vineyard by removing “green” fruit that is lagging behind.  Making the grapes more uniform is better for wine quality.

How do we make this decision? Well, we look at grape clusters that are unlikely to ripen up and pull them off the vine. Those grapes are usually green, as opposed to the red of mature grapes, and we drop them on the ground where they are eventually cultivated and returned into the vineyard, hence the name: green drop.

Check out the video to see just what this process looks like.