l'élagueur

To the unschooled eye the vines all look the same, creating a daunting sight walking into the vineyard to begin pruning. Each vine, however, displays it's own idiosyncrasies from seasons past. Within a minute or so each vine's potential quality (and quantity) for the 2011 vintage will be determined.

Winter, thus far, has been unsympathetic to pruning. We don't prune in the rain - due mainly to increased risk of spreading potential disease between vines. Hence we're currently about 2 weeks behind schedule.

For us in the winery we relish pruning our superior parcels - we walk out of each row with the vines and  soil essentially undisturbed until spring. This includes burning all of the previous years growth removed from the vine. This serves two mains purposes - repressing the spread of potential diseased cuttings while avoiding the need for a tractor to pass over the soil to mulch the cuttings. While we minimise all tractor passes through the vineyard, we finely mulch and forage many of the cuttings as an essential ingredient during our compost assemblage.

The result. Two canes, each with 3 or 4 upward facing buds, tightly wrapped around the wire.

Fleetingly in the cellar to top barrels the music tends to be alluring and pensive...