Harvest time is always full of activity and walking into any cellar brings such specific wine aromas - I love it! So when Darling Cellars invited us to join them for their 2026 Crush Day - we did not hesitate. My partner Kevin Kidson and I joined the 150+ keen crushers for the day, and we had a very slow and deliberate drive up in the back of their tractors to the nearby Mourvedre bush vine block. I always forget how hard it is to harvest and of course, bending down to get the grapes hidden under the canopy is not a walk in the park! It also illustrates how important canopy management is - both for ripening and the subsequent picking! We picked, stomped, pressed and measured the juice, enjoyed their wines and burgers and were entertained by the energetic Darling team who showed us just how to move our bodies to the music!It is clearly a happy outing for many from the area and Cape Town, and with experiential tourism being flavour of the month, was sold out in no time of course. And just when we were all chilling out, their marketing manager, Lourens Relihan wished wine.co.za a very happy 30th birthday with a delicious cake and candles to blow out! He took us back to 2020 and the dreadful lockdown era, and reminded us that we had set up their online store in record time and facilitated sales of R1m during that difficult time, already 6 years ago!Thank you team Darling - how very special..