When we first purchased Quinta Claro in Portugal’s Douro Valley, we had romantic dreams of making estate wine from our own grapes. Those quixotic plans were quickly tapered when we walked through the four acre vineyard.
The vines were on life support — they hadn’t been cleaned, pruned nor given nutrients for over five years. The clusters that did exist were shriveled and miniscule. The Quinta had once been an active boutique winery with a cellar room filled with old barrels. After the property changed hands several times, the vines had sadly been neglected.
Hiring a vineyard consultant
A consultant explains the local AVA legislation: the government will subsidize the majority of the cost for ripping up old vines and replanting new ones. Why? Replacing old dying vines with young ones will promise a higher yield, resulting in more wine production, and as such, more taxable goods. Looking dismissively at our old vines, the consultant suggests we take the government on their offer.
Here’s the problem: The best tasting and most complex wines come from grapes on old vines. Replacing the mature vines with new clones would eventually boost the quantity of the crop, but would take many, many years to match the potential quality.
Definition of Old Vines
The term “old vines” has no official definition. Some wineries consider vines to be old at 10 years and others only when they have reached 50 years. Our vineyard contains mature vines well over 100 years old.
We asked ourselves, what is our objective with this vineyard and winery? To make as much wine as possible? Or make the best wine as possible? For us, it’s quality above all. Thus, we decide against ripping out the old vines.
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Our neighbors in Portugal
Enter, our neighbors. They own the vineyard adjacent to ours and are 4th generation vineyard managers and winemakers; they are also some of the nicest, most genuine folks we’ve ever met.
When we explained our predicament, they said the government offer is a pretty good deal and they recommend taking it. However, given our wine quality objective, we hashed out plan B.
Our plan to revive the vineyard
- Cleaning: Get rid of all the weeds, bush and overgrowth — make the vine rows walkable to properly treat the vines and harvest by hand.
- Pruning: 2-3 buds per spur pruning method, keeping shoots with thicker stems.
- Adding: Use organic fertilizer on the soil and protectant to the leaves to help flowering and bunch growth.
- Grafting: For vines that are in the worst shape, cut down to the base and graft new vines onto rootstock.
One year later in 2022, the vines start to show major improvement. The bunches and more plentiful and the shoots and leaves look healthy. At harvest, the 4 acres yielded approximately 200kg of grapes and 120 liters of wine.
This year, we saw even more improvements, with some of the new grafts taking hold and the oldest vines producing even more fruit. We yielded approximately 930kg of grapes, resulting in over 500 liters of wine–nearly a 5x increase. Keep in mind, we’re making Port, so the wine to grape ratio here may be different than wineries making dry table wine.
The merit of old vines
So far, our decision to keep the old vines appears to be working Our neighbors believe that we should be able to yield even more in the following years, without compromising quality. We are so lucky to have them and their team.
Young vines are like young people — they are energetic, exciting, full of energy and strength, but they pale in comparison to the experience and wisdom of elders. We may have financially benefitted from replacing the old vines with new, but why not give those old vines a shot? They deserve it.
