Although we’ve had very little rain the vines have been on a tear since May, growing from the mid-wire to the top wire (and beyond) so fast that I would swear they are growing while we sleep!
Last season we began using palissage on all the red grapes. It’s a fancy word of French origin (word and technique) for the practice of wrapping the shoot tips on the top wire as they grow. In former years we hedged the shoots when they grew beyond the top wire, but this can lead to a crowded canopy because when the growing tip is removed it stimulates the production of lateral shoots which can in turn block sunlight and air which are especially important in the fruiting region when the grapes are ripening. Hedging also makes the use of bird netting even more difficult because the nets get caught on the severed shoot tips, and since it is already a challenging task we are heartily in favor of anything that makes it easier (or at least less difficult). Last but not least palissage is thought to control overall vine size – if you’ve been to our vineyard you’ll know why we find that appealing! While we haven’t conducted a scientific study on our site, we have noted that since we began using palissage the number of lateral shoots has decreased and overall vine size/vigor has been reduced.
We were hoping to implement palissage in the Sauvignon Blanc this season as well but the vines grew so fast that we had to hedge them. In previous seasons this too was a fairly laborious task. Due to the narrow aisles we had to pile the cuttings on the ground and carry them out by hand or pile them in a wheel barrow and cart them out. But wait – didn’t David build a handy dandy narrow wagon that we used for pruning season? Eureka! He is now a master at riding in the wagon while wielding the battery hedge trimmer, and I am honing my skills at operating the old 180 mower smoothly in low gear. Don’t fret – the hedge trimmer has an automatic shutoff, David is not nearly as close to my head as he appears to be in the photo, and we both know that neither of us could do this without the other so we are very careful 🙂
