Alex loves pruning!

Double Guyot pruning

The main task in the vineyard during winter is pruning which has to be done by hand. We now have 21,000 vines to prune but fortunately Alex loves the job. Since December she has been sniping away with the help of her partner Cliff and some casual workers. I'm feeling very guilty as I've been in Australia for the last 6 weeks on a combined holiday and work trip.

Pruning this year is taking a bit longer as we have some trunk disease in the vineyard. To help prevent this from spreading we have decided to sterilise the secateurs between vines and also spray all the pruning wounds with Trichoderma which helps to heal the wounds quickly.

The pruning is now complete and we have started to tie down the canes to the fruiting wire. Those most susceptible to frost will be left until the end in the hope that by leaving them higher will make them less vulnerable. We have also left the canes a little longer as initial bud burst tends to occur at the end of the cane. We will prune the canes again to around 6 buds once the danger of a spring frost has gone at the end of April.

Winter Pruning

Pruning is the main task in the vineyard during winter. This can begin once the leaves have dropped and therefore normally starts in late November and continues through to February.

There are many methods for pruning and training vines which is normally determined according to the climate and the variety of grape being grown. Different systems can help to increase exposure of the foliage to light, improve air movement through the leaf canopy (and therefore reduce the risk of mildew and botrytis) and control vigorous vines that produce too much foliage and not enough fruit. This is all part of canopy management, which refers to how the architecture of the leaf canopy can be manipulated in order to beneficially alter the microclimate around the vine.

In the UK the training system mostly used is cane pruning where the vine is pruned back each year to the trunk, leaving just one or two canes from the previous year, which then produce many more fruiting canes during the growing season. A spur from the trunk is also left (cut back to two buds) to produce new replacement canes for the following year. This is also known as the "Double Guyot" system. In the photograph above the canes have been left intentionally long until after the risk of frost in the Spring as buds will form at the end of the canes first. Once the risk as gone these will be cut back to 5 or 6 buds.

The new vines that were planted last May will be pruned back to just two buds above the graft to encourage root growth and produce a strong new shoot which will form the basis of the trunk for the following year.

So far we've pruned about 3,000 vines - only 18,000 to go!