Grape Stains: Pruning and Training

Week of June 6th

We spent part of this week pruning some of our vines. I thought I would walk through the process which I only learnt myself this week (Oh and by the end of the first day I also learnt that I need sun screen...pretty badly, my farmer tan speaks to that :)

I should also advise everyone that being a novice winery manager, I definitely do not always use the correct terminology!

This is one of our new white hybrid vines. It does not have an official name yet, just known as ES-18101239813498...or some number I can never remember. This vine has been fairly well trained as it growing straight and has loads of suckers (Which need to be removed so the vine concentrates its growing where we want it).

We tie the vine with biodegradable twine to the metal stakes but first we need to detach the branches.You can see here how the vine attaches itself to practically anything. They are fairly tough, pulling won't achieve too much, far easier to cut them.

Here is one of the limbs I cut off to encourage growth. You can already see the grape clusters forming which is a very good sign for the hardiness of these vines.

After cutting the limbs off we can train the vines to go horizontally (Again, by tying them with twine). It is going in one direction here and will two limbs eventually, one going in each direction. Then the leaves will sprout up to the upper wires to collect as much sun as possible and the grape clusters will form around waist height.