How to prune grapevines
Pruning is one of the most important factors in growing premium grapes. The main reason to prune is to control yield, but also to manipulate a vine’s health & energy consumption, disease prevention and grape balance. On top of this, any changes made will not just affect this year’s crop, but the following year as well.
Thus, when Paul and Kathryn Sloan from Small Vines Wines invited us to prune with them, we were excited.
High Density Planting
The Sloan’s use Burgundian practices for their Pinot Noir and Chardonnay vines; the most notable being “high density planting”. This method centers around the belief that if vines are closer together, their roots will fight harder and stretch further for nutrients and water underground, thus bringing in more flavor into the grapes. It’s strikingly obvious how much closer together the rows are vs. the norm for California vineyards.
Paul and Kathryn learned this technique by working with the Grand Daddy of all Burgundian producers: Domaine Romanée Conti. Having tried both DRC and Small Vines single vineyard Pinot Noirs, we are convinced that they are onto something here; the end result in bottle is a superior wine.
Steps to consider when pruning
Every vine is like a puzzle. One must figure out where to make the right cuts in order to set up the vine for success in the coming years. These are some tips we learned from Paul when evaluating how to prune a vine:
- Count it: See how many shoots were present last year and decide if this was the right amount, too much or too little. Base your decisions on the quality of the shoots – you don’t want them too thick or thin; the diameter of a pencil is ideal.
- Vascular flow: So you’ve chosen how many buds to keep for this year, now you must decide which cane you want to be the fruiting cane to lie down. A cane is defined as a dormant shoot from the prior year, now to be used to spawn new shoots (which bear the grapes). Ideally, the selected fruiting cane is one that is already moving in the right direction. What you want to avoid is constricting the vines vascular flow by twisting the direction; think of a garden hose when it’s pinched and what happens to the water flow.
- Space is key: One of the ways to avoid the threat of mildew is to create more airflow within the vine. How is this accomplished? Spacing out the buds more than a hand’s width apart. That will ensure that the shoots growing won’t overlap and have too many leaves, clusters or tendrils blocking the precious airflow.
- Knock on (dead) wood: When cutting old dead wood, don’t cut too close to the trunk. This will invite degradation too close to the trunk. Instead, cut the dead wood further out and leave some space. The following year, you can proceed with cutting it back closer to the trunk.
- Fruit dropping: In an ideal world, there won’t be much fruit to drop, since the pruning decisions made shouldn’t yield an overabundance of clusters. However, Paul aims for no more than 2 clusters per shoot. If there is one cluster to drop, it will be the one furthest out from the vine.
[VIDEO] How to prune grapevines
Check out the video below with Paul Sloan from Small Vines Wines where he talks about his approach when pruning for premium quality grapes.
