Grapevines are like people, Vol. #2
Teach your grapevines well.
As I shared with all of you in the last quarters newsletter story, “Grapevines are like people: they get viruses too”, people and grapevines share a lot of similarities. Just like with children, the early years of a grapevine’s life are their most important. Just like with raising a child it is important to give grapevines a great foundation. You need to give a newborn the proper home, food, and most importantly love. Grapevines need the same thing. For a new vine the proper prepared soil is a must. The soil needs to be ripped and cultivated so its roots can grow to nourish the vines. Like a newborn child vines need water and nutrients to grow a strong base to produce grapes for the future. And like a child, grapevines need attention and love. Here timing is of upmost importance. Training a grapevine properly is a tedious process. There are so many ways to train them and picking the proper method depends on many things. Just like individual children they all grow up with different characteristics and needs. Picking the correct training method depends on such things as the soil’s vigor, the vines variety and vigor, the rootstock the scion wood is grafted to, size and ripening period of the grapes.
Unlike many vineyards and like things I have done in the past, we are cane pruning (leaving new second- year vine-wood every year) on the wires instead of the more traditional bi-lateral cordon (old vine wood left on the wires with short spurs) many varieties that others wouldn’t. Again, like people, these training methods depends on the personality of the vine and its environment. It’s all about putting the vigor of the shoots just where you want them, not wasting the vines energy on improperly placed shoots and growth.
People who have a second-sense about these matters who can train vines to be clones of one another I call “Vine-Whisperers”. One of the greatest examples of this phenomenon was the late Charles Wagner of Caymus fame. The father of Chuck and the grandfather of Joe. I met him in the late 1970’s on a trip to Napa. He took me through his vineyards and I was amazed at the beauty and functionality of his vineyards. His Zinfandel vineyard was bilaterally-trained and spur- pruned, a somewhat new method for Zinfandel at the time. Every vine was super vigorous, productive and looked exactly the same as the vine before and the vine after, like a marching army, and it made very good wine. He then told me he was pulling it out because he thought he could make better Cabernet Sauvignon from his land than Zinfandel. What a great decision that turned out to be. For me, I aspire to be the same kind of Vine-Whisperer. I spend a great deal of my time these days in our vineyard tending my flock. This year I pruned at least 8 acres of my vineyards, mainly the younger blocks to make sure they were done properly. Again, a very important time in their life. Just like children, if you listen and watch them, they will tell you what they need. To be a great successful wine grower it is important to produce as much tonnage as possible while making the best wine you can, a real balancing act. It is one reason we are constantly replacing weak, missing, and/or diseased vines in our vineyards with new ones. It’s all about keeping tonnage and quality high. It costs just as much for the labor, the diesel, and the equipment to drive by a dead vine as it does a heathy one. It is really just viticulture 101. Just like the song by CSNY, “Teach your children well”.
— Gregory Graziano, Vine-Whisperer