Thieves Stripped A Canadian Vineyard Of Grapes The Night Before Harvest

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When workers arrived at Canada's Vignoble Coteau Rougemont vineyard on Thursday, ready to pick the last grapes of the season, they were in for a shock.
On removing the nets from their carefully cultivated vines, they discovered thieves had hit the site overnight -- making off with half a tonne of grapes, equivalent to more than 300 bottles of wine.

"In the morning, my workers went into the parcel, and started removing the nets, and when they got into the row, they realized that for half of the row, the nets were already taken off," said Michel Robert, owner of the family-run vineyard in Rougemont, Quebec.

"When they looked at it, they saw there were no more grapes on the row," he said.
The thieves made off with half a tonne of Vidal blanc grapes -- enough for 325 bottles of white wine, retailing at $5,000 Canadian dollars (around US$3,800) in total, Robert said.

Robert told CNN that he thinks thieves used an all-terrain vehicle, garbage bags and a small trailer to make off with the grapes in the middle of the night, noting that they left behind a trash sack as evidence of their exploits.
"People were surprised, shocked, frustrated, angry -- all the adjectives, you know," he said. "It's the work of six months. You work on it for six months, you take care of the vines, you prune, you spray, you do all kinds of treatment on it so you can collect the fruit. And six months later, you're ready to pick it up, and it's gone," he added.
"Half a tonne is half a tonne, and we were counting on those grapes to produce wine."

By: Amy Woodyatt
Source: cnn.com
October 26, 2020