At Mazza Winery and Vineyards in North East, it's a rush of activity.  Workers are moving and pouring huge crates of just picked Niagara grapes into the presses, extracting the precious, flavorful juice for making white wines.

According to general manager Mario Mazza, they started picking and processing the large volume Niagara crop last week.  "So we start off with some bigger volume, higher tonnage runs to get the team up and going, you know knock the cobwebs off.  "It's been 10 months since we've done this, and then we get into the some of the fun things from a winemakers perspective as well," he said.

The area's significant grape crop, which comprises most of the 13,000 acres in Pennsylvania, factors into the state's two largest economic drivers -- agriculture and tourism. "Our industry touches on those both and given that most of the  grapes are grown in Erie County, we contribute significantly to that economic impact for the state," Mazza said. 

For the Niagara grapes now being pressed for white wine-making and for the Concord grapes still ripening on the vine, it has been a challenging growing season-- really wet and cold in the early spring and then super hot and dry in the mid to late summer. The conditions lately, with much needed rains followed by cooler temperatures are surprising local growers.  A crop that was slow to mature in the hot, dry weather is now expected to finish strong.

"I mean we've got beautiful weather now --moderate temperature during the day, nice cool nights.  Acidity's going to start to drop out of the fruit so we're excited, optimistic as always for a good quality year," Mazza said.  "I think we've got some challenges on the horizon with some of that disease pressure carrying over from the spring in that extraordinarily wet start to the season, but there's a lot of fruit that looks really good right now as well."

After the Niagara pressing, for Mazza it will be on to other wine grape pressing - Diamond, Cayuga, and hand-picked Pinot Noir for making sparkling wines.  And Mazza like other regional growers will be watching the weather.  "If we get days like this you know, with maybe a little rain every 7 or 10 days, that would be a great fall season to finish off with," Mazza said smiling.