Planting
January 29th, 2008 Posted in Planting, ViticultureVine planting is a complicated process. This makes it difficult for winemakers to keep up with trends, because it can take up to 5 years from first planting before they can successfully harvesty grapes to make wine. Vines are planted to either replace old vines, or start new vineyards. Almost all vines consist of a European vine grafted on to an American vine rootstock, because of its resistance to phylloxera.
When a vine is planted, it can produce grapes for about 35 to 50 years. As it grows older, it will produce less and less grapes, but often those grapes will be of higher quality, leaving the winemaker with a decision of a quality versus quantity. When vines are grubbed up, the land usually needs to lie fallow for at least 3 years before planting new vines, so a vineyard has a cycle of land usage that must be monitored. The first yield usually will not come until the 3rd year of harvesting, and often that first harvest will not be used to make wine.
After the new vines are planted, the European rootstock is all that will be visible above the soil. This visible base is called the scion. During the spring, shoots bearing tendrils and leaves will grow from the scion. Over the next winter, those shoots will mature and turn brown, when they are called canes. When grapes eventually grow, the grow from shoots formed that spring from these canes. Sometimes a cane is pruned short, leaving only a two or three buds, and then it is called a spur. By the end of the next year, the canes and spurs are usually removed and new canes and spurs are allowed to grow.
In addition to planting, the way the vines are trained and pruned will have a large effect on how the wine turns out. I’ll move onto to those topics next.
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