Well now in the dead of winter, and power restored, we are continuing our job of pruning the grapes. I've spoken about various aspects of this over the past years. The main reason for pruning grapes (or really any other tree or shrub) is to achieve a balance between vegetative growth and quality fruit (or flowers). For us, this is the most important yet time consuming part of what we do to deliver quality grapes and wine.
In many of the vineyards we use a machine for pre-pruning vines (
Watch Video).
The result can really help the hand labor of pruning for workers as the next step is maybe much more precise than one might think.
We are actually counting nodes or buds from last year's growth, pruning to a set number of buds for each vine. Those nodes can be seen here in detail and they are where new growth will come this year along with grapes, so as we are pruning and counting we are also thinking about the spacing of these so that grapes don't get piled up by the next harvest.
