such an intense lifestyle, especially harvest time.

Getting up at 6 in the morning, your mum is already cooking the lunch for 15 people to be later packed into insulating casings to be taken with you to the vineyard, dad outside waiting already for you to prepare the trailers hooked up to the tractor, then after 8 hours hard manual work in the 45° angled vineyard processing the grapes with the press, tending the previously pressed juice that already started fermenting, than shoveling nearly a ton of grape remains into a large container and compacting them (for latter distilling the stuff to grappa) then falling into bed at a quarter to 11?
Yeah, somewhat intense...
During other times of the year (especially in winter) on the other hand life was almost meditatively chill.
I really liked that, but it is just incredibly hard to make decent money with it, considering all the work...

And yes, all of our grapes were green (and completely hard) during much of their ripening process, red and white ones alike. They just change colour and become soft and sweet during the last few weeks before harvest.