An Old Mission Peninsula winery welcomed a pretty cool piece of French agricultural ingenuity to its vineyard this week.

It doesn’t have a fancy name, but this French-made “tool carrier” is a vineyard workhorse. Thanks to a specialized “arm” at the front of the machine, this multi-function carrier can be used throughout the grape growing season for a multitude of vineyard tasks.

“It’s quite unique,” says Vineyard Manager Paul Dalese. “We can attach different implements to perform different functions. We can use this machine the whole year.”

It’s definitely unique to this region’s vineyards. While Chateau Chantal has had a “harvester” for 20 years (as do a few other area wineries), that type of equipment could only harvest grapes. For other jobs, such as pruning and training new growth, workers had to attach tools to the side of a tractor – maneuverability was always a challenge.

Not anymore. The tool carrier does it all – from harvesting to pre-pruning to hedging to shoot positioning (tucks new growth into trellis) – and all from above, explains winemaker and company Vice President Mark Johnson.

The new harvesting tool attachment also has its own de-stemmer for removing each grape from the cluster, which bypasses one whole step in the harvesting process, Johnson says.

The winery is anticipating significant efficiencies in labor and vineyard processes overall.

The plan is to first put the tool carrier to use after this season’s harvest is over, (anticipated to start in mid-October, a week or so later than usual).

“We’ll use it for pre-pruning in the winter, which could be right after harvest,” says Johnson.

What used to take 15 hours by hand to do an acre, will now take one hour by machine, according to Johnson.

“That’s a 15 percent savings with just that one piece of equipment,” he says.

It wasn’t the easiest journey from France to Center Road, though – spending three months on a ship crossing the ocean, and then to California for some final work to it that Dalese requested. While there, the warehouse in which it was housed was under threat of being consumed by the wildfires.

Now that it’s finally here, though, Dalese can’t wait to put it to work on the 90 acres that Chateau Chantal farms on the OMP.