Friday, January 25, 2013

Pruning is on the way big time!

Not much happens during the winter, while the vines are dormant, except for pruning -- but that's no small feat. Pruning will very much affect the vine's development during the growing season, its balance and the canopy. And balanced vines produce balanced wines!





This is a cane-pruned vine, where the two arms have become too distant from each other. To re-train it,
we leave a sucker that next year can be
trained to form a perfect cane.
And this is a cane-pruned vine that we have re-trained. Last year's sucker has become the new cane, so now the two arms are close to each other and will make for a 
perfectly balanced canopy. 







We found a really well pruned cordon vine! Look at the perfect positions of each cordon arm: four on the 
right and four on the left.

This is the 'snaggletooth' pruning system that we have developed for AlbariƱo. It forms a divided canopy
without a double arm that would make the vine  much bigger and negatively impact quality.





We had a lot of good company yesterday! Besides our
friend Molly, Tony's cute and smart dog, this
little puppy was so much fun -- we 
ran and ran together!
Digging for gophers is a fabulous part of our vineyard walks! We took turns at getting in the hole -- but no,
we didn't catch a single gopher. Just ended up
really messed up with mud!


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