Pruning Season: Why this is one of the more important happenings each vintage

When harvest is over and the holidays loom, winegrowers are thinking about one thing: pruning! Pruning is an annual event at a vineyard; vines must be tidied up to produce the best fruit for the upcoming vintage.

What a vineyard looks like before pruning (child for decorative purposes only):

What a vineyard looks like after pruning (child removed for sanitary purposes):

You can see the difference. The canes (or stalks that grow upward in the trellis) are trimmed back to a couple of buds each (where the new leaves will emerge). Anything dead or too crowded is cut off.

Grapevines fruit on one-year old wood, so those few buds left will each sprout leaves in (in the early spring) and then a tiny shoot that eventually winds up into the trellis. Off of those, clusters of fruit will emerge in the early summer. Getting pruning right means the canes will be properly spaced, not crowded, and will grow in the right direction to fill the trellis wires as they're raised up and up throughout the year.

Grapes are fruit, and need to not be squished together, or completely shaded out by leaves. So pruning is the first, most important thing to be done correctly, each and every vintage. When done incorrectly, it makes the grapegrowers life a nightmare, as they try to untangle growth, bend shoots or clip off fruit growing to close together. Without proper airflow through the canopy, fungal diseases can take hold.

This year, our Charles Vineyard is looking nice and tidy. Big thanks to the crews who are so amazingly expert at their jobs (and to our winegrowers Bill & Nancy Charles who are always overseeing, tweaking, fixing and otherwise carefully tending to the vines).