Preston — The owners of the Preston Ridge Vineyard handed out gloves and cutting shears to about 50 volunteers Saturday morning and sent them into a field of vines to harvest the last grapes of the season.

A frost was coming, and the blue-black cabernet franc grapes were perfectly ripe and sweet at the end of the long, dry growing season.

"Isn't this gorgeous?" said Claribell Maldonado of Middletown, a first-time volunteer, holding up a cluster of grapes.

Like the others, she said a love of wine and nature drew her and her husband, Ramon to the vineyard.

Patrick Craig of Vernon was tall enough to look over the row of vines, located on the peak of a ridge, at the expansive view of the Thames River valley, where trees were nearing peak foliage.

"It's a beautiful scene right now," he said. "Everything's changing color."

He and his girlfriend, Sarah Harmonay, planned to visit a couple of other vineyards after finishing the harvest. Sunday, he said, would be a day to relax and watch football. 

Andrew and Cara Sawyer, who hail from Iowa and New Jersey, respectively, fell in love with the area after touring the Connecticut Wine Trail and bought the 60-acre site of a former dairy farm in 2008.

They hired a winemaker from Pomfret as a consultant and planted their first grapes in 2009.

The vines, planted on 6 acres, took four years to mature, and this year, for the first time, all of the fields are yielding fruit, according to Andrew Sawyer.

The couple operate the vineyard with help from their parents and a growing contingent of employees, including two who work in the fields and six who staff a bright, airy tasting room located in the same "barn" that houses the cellar where six varieties of wine are aged in stainless steel tanks and oak barrels.

The vineyard also hosts weddings, music performances and other events.

When it comes to harvesting the grapes — and the cabernet franc grapes were the fourth harvest of the season — the Sawyers rely on volunteers who respond to their email blasts and receive a bottle of wine and a 25 percent discount for their efforts.

"It's so incredible," said Ann Sawyer (Andrew's mother). "We get 50 or more people every harvest, and they do a fantastic job. They're meticulous."

The volunteers chatted and laughed while steadily clipping groups of grapes. 

Within minutes, employees were delivering bins of fruit to Steve Sawyer and Mark Helms, fathers of the vineyard's owners, who fed them through a crusher/de-stemming machine into bigger bins called fermenters.

The skins will remain on the grapes, adding color, flavor and healthy "tannins" to the finished product.

On Monday, Sawyer said they would add yeast to begin fermenting the fruit juice, which is called, "must."

They'll use a bladder press to extract all of the juice from the grapes, and eventually it will end up in oak barrels in the wine cellar, where it will age into a bright red wine.

Later, the cabernet franc will be bottled and consumed, the owners hope, by happy customers.

A "cab franc" like this should be paired with a hearty meal, like a grilled steak, said volunteer Mark Youngclaus of Waterford, who with a group of family and friends has helped out at the Preston Ridge Vineyard for the past three years.

But first, the harvest. The returning volunteers said this variety of grapes, known for its sweetness, was easier to gather than others, because they grew in a cluster along a string of cable.

"You have to cup the grapes (with a hand) and clip the vine," said Tyler Osborn of Norwich, who is Youngclaus' nephew. Osborn, a production planner at Electric Boat, said the experience "brings you a little back to nature."  

The Preston Ridge Vineyard, located at 100 Miller Road, is one of 25 vineyards on the Connecticut Wine Trail. 

"We can grow as good a quality of wine as anyplace, because we have a cooler climate," said Ann Sawyer.

k.florin@theday.com

Twitter: @KFLORIN