Sunrise on the harvest line.

Five-thirty in the morning. The mist on Cau Dat has not lifted yet, and the slope ahead is a soft grey-green wash where the rows should be. The pickers gather at the edge of Plot 14 with cloth bags slung diagonally across their chests. Mai counts heads; Bà Thuyết hands out the small paring knives.

We do not start by talking. There is a kind of unspoken protocol to a Cau Dat sunrise — first the walk up to the top of the plot, then the silent fanning out, then the snap of the first cherry between two fingers. The sound is small, but if you are close enough you can hear it travel.

"Look first," Bà Thuyết always says. "If you have to look twice, leave it." The instruction is about ripeness — a ripe Bourbon cherry is the colour of an old garnet, with a give to it that you can almost taste through your fingertips.

By six the mist has begun to lift, and the colour of the slope changes. The dark green of the plants resolves into the lighter green of the new leaves and the dark red of the ripe cherries and the duller red of the ones that are not quite there yet. Twelve pickers, working in pairs, can clear about a hectare in a long morning.

I make a note in my book: "Plot 14, Bourbon, 6:42 a.m., third row from the top, four kilos in the bag, no green cherries seen, no chipped branches." This is what gets weighed at the dryer at the end of the morning. This is the number on the label of every bag we eventually ship.