Arterra Wines owner and winemaker, Jason Murray walks you through the importance of “Knowing your Source” when it comes to the wines you consume. As a conscientious consumer, it is important to understand how the wines you drink are made and more importantly what goes in them.
Have you ever thought of the environmental impact of choosing local vs. international? You should.
Do you know what is in your wines and who makes them? You should.
Furthermore, cleanly produced native yeast wines express high quality grape growing and winemaking of a scale that allows truly focused craftsmanship rather than mass production. Have a listen to learn more.
One of the most surprising things I hear from both customers and industry professionals – is that they had no idea wine could be made without adding yeast. Conventional commercial winemaking is a quest for consistency and expected outcomes. Commercial yeast is often one of the first defining factors of the ultimate outcome of the character of any wine. One great example is the differences of yeast that one would choose to “make” a New Zealand Style Sauvignon Blanc, versus a Sancerre Style. Another great analogy is the world of brewing, where a boiled liquid has thus been sterilized, and yeast is added, specifically based on the desired stylistic outcome. In this approach, the concept of “place” or “terroir” is abandoned, it is immediately replaced by preconceived notions of intended results; a “New Zealand Style” Sauvignon Blanc no longer needs to be from New Zealand.
Every bottle of wine says on the back “This wine is a reflection of the unique soils of our site”, claiming attributes of terroir. I can’t help but say this infuriates me, because it confuses the expectations of the customers. How can they know what anything from somewhere actually “should” taste like, when the standard practice is to over-ride the starting ingredient.
Amphora Chardonnay Fermentation
“I’ve been in over 90 Virginia wineries, and you are the first one I’ve heard say they are making a ‘Virginia-Style’ Wine”. We hear this statement quite a lot. It all comes down to true expression of place, and that requires using yeast that is uniquely specific to the vineyard site.
How did I come to this practice ? Quite simply – as a new winemaker, I perceived much more complex and interesting characteristics in the grapes we were growing than were showing up in the wines made with commercial yeast. The wines were simple. I’d heard legend of pre-industrial era wines being layered and complex and intriguing; I wanted to achieve that. Furthermore, with conventional winemaking, the better my wines got, the more they tasted exactly like everybody else’s “good” wines. I found that un-inspiring, so I quested for greater wine.
Spontaneous Yeast Fermentations are sacred. Every batch of grapes starts fermenting on its own: no starter culture, no subsequent inoculations. The first yeast that initiate fermentation are completely different than the yeast that show up during the main vigorous phase of fermentation. These first yeast yield the wide, outwardly expansive volume, and rich viscous texture that we love at Arterra. They are also super sensitive to residual pesticides, so we need to be certain there is no chemical residue on the fruit – which is a significant attribute. Commercial yeast is selected partly for its tolerance to residual pesticides. Ugh…
Red Fermentation Bin
But Native Yeast fermentation isn’t just one yeast; it is a succession of typically 6 to 8 yeasts, all of which are present on the grape skin, and they come in and out of dominance as thresholds of alcohol and temperature are crossed. Each different yeast assimilates the characteristics differently, resulting in far greater complexity; a wine that is not simple.
Additionally, Native Yeast contributes to clean wine based on balanced population dynamics. Whereas commercial yeast, especially at high inoculation rates creating excessive competition, are sold with the supposed attribute that they will prevent other biology from thriving. This is made to sound like a good thing, until you think about it, and some research recently confirmed this concept, that in overly competitive yeast fermentations the yeast exude toxins to kill off competitive biology favoring only the intended yeast. These toxins are not removable from wine.
These impacts of commercial yeast are significant: residual pesticides, toxins, etc. These, in addition to fining agents, certainly can be attributed to adverse reactions to wine, and often people avoiding wine in general.
But what is Native Yeast really? There are a limited number of fruits that harbor yeast as the fruit is ripening. I can recall this being grapes, dates, figs, and others I cannot recall. These yeasts are patiently waiting for any type of wound or degradation so they can access the juice, ferment, and thrive. All other fruits only ferment after coming into contact with yeast, which often is of fungal origin in the soil – for example apples will not ferment while hanging as a crop, but will once they fall to the ground.
So, this is the story of how wine came to be. In ancient times food crops were often preserved by being stored in clay amphora that were buried to maintain temperature control – grains, root crops, etc. It makes sense that at some point somebody put a bunch of grapes in a buried amphora, and it naturally fermented to wine. This was supernatural from their perspective. Then it was repeatable.
Spring Flowering and Fruit Set
As such, the ancient beverage fermentations were all started using these fruits that harbor yeast. Research finds that the oldest evidence of alcoholic beverages is either these fruits specifically, or a mixed beverage with grains and one or more of these fruits. These certain fruits were required to start fermentation. Thereafter, in a grain based community, once a beverage was fermenting, stored grains could be rehydrated, and the initial fermentation would be used as a starter for subsequent batches, as long as it was kept active in continuity.
Red Grapes Fermentation
A very common misconception, alluding to Native Yeast Fermentations “not being a real thing”, is the insinuation that un-inoculated fermentations are actually just starting from previous commercial yeast additions, that are now ambient floating around in the cellar. This seems ridiculous to me. First, wine has fermented with Native Yeast for thousands of years before the technology to isolate and propagate commercial yeast came into being. Second, when Arterra moved into the Delaplane winery for harvest 2014, this was a new facility, with all new equipment, with no previous existence of fermentation, and yet the fermentations proceeded un-inoculated as usual, with the wine characteristics matching prior and subsequent wines. Furthermore, Native Yeast Fermentations can be carried out alongside commercial yeast fermentations, and produce consistently repeatable differences of outcome.
As far as I am concerned, native yeast is the gold standard of wine. The greatest wines in history have been made with Native Yeast. Wine has been made for thousands of years with native yeast. The quality that results, and the health implications, are significant.
Arterra will always be 100% Spontaneous Native Yeast fermentation. As nature created. Wabi Sabi.
Creating wine with these cleaner methods means one very significant thing, YOU MUST HAVE HIGH QUALITY FRUIT.
Arterra Wines has long embraced the idea of True Terroir. So what does this really mean? At Arterra, we utilize minimal interventions in the cellar. This includes all native yeast fermentations (we will discuss this significance of this in another post), no additives or chemicals, minimal sulfites, and neutral oak. Creating wine with these cleaner methods means one very significant thing, YOU MUST HAVE HIGH QUALITY FRUIT. Having the best fruit is the pillar of creating a true terroir wine. The grapes will tell the narrative of how each vintage year evolved. Terroir is not just soil and earth, terroir as a philosophy is the story of growing the grapes. This not only includes overall land topography (slope), but also the people who tended the fruit, what chemicals were used (or in our case not used), how much the sun was shining, how much it rained or didn’t rain, how hot or humid, how cool and when; and YES, the natural yeast that grow on the skins of the fruit are all part of true terroir. Embracing all of these aspects and steering them to grow high quality fruit is just as much science as art.
Some parts of the world are easier places to grow winegrapes, but that doesn’t necessarily translate to better wine. Some places certainly present more challenges. Why would one choose to produce wine in a challenging region, how would they go about doing that compared to other regions, and what are the implications? As the saying goes: “Good things don’t come easy.” In fact – some of the worlds most interesting wines arise form these “challenging” regions. To explore this, let’s start broader and work our focus towards finer points.
Defining Virginia’s Climate in terms of Viticulture
Virginia is unique in several ways. Starting macro and then narrowing the view:
Virginia has Hot Summers, and Cold Winters. This is a conundrum – as most grapes that can handle our winters, do not perform well in heat; whereas most grapes that can handle our heat, do not survive our winters. Good choices become important to balance reliable productivity with optimal quality.
As a viticulture ripening region – focusing on the influence of diurnal temperature regimes – Virginia can be defined as a region with Warm Days and Warm Nights during the growing and ripening season. This differs from most wine regions being coastal having cool nights accompanying the warm days (eg. Coastal California), or Cool Days with Cool Nights (think Finger Lakes, Bordeaux, Loire, etc.). The warm nights rapidly reduce acidity during ripening. So while a grape like Petit Verdot or Tannat would be way too acidic in a region with cool nights, they come into an ideal balance in Virginia, and this is unique. So while some grapes handle #1 above as far as surviving and ripening – #2 here dramatically shortens the list in terms of consistent quality.
Virginia has Significant Rainfall. Some grapevines during ripening will continue to uptake as much water as is available to them – examples being Cabernet Sauvignon and Cabernet Franc. Whereas others have environmental cues that the season is ending and cease water uptake, initiating berry dehydration, which provides consistent concentration regardless of wet soils. This makes the list of ideal varietals quite small at this point.
And last Virginia has humidity and retains Damp Conditions in the canopy and on the fruit; another list shortening implication of which grapes are suitable.
Wow that is a big bad scary list of hardships, so why do it? Yet somehow, with Appalachian soils, shifts towards cooler fall ripening (as opposed to picking in summer heat), and unique varietals – Virginia produces some of the most genuinely flavorful wines in the world, in terms of fruit flavor characteristics.
So, step 1 – we’ve chosen some grapes that can handle the winters and shut down water uptake during late stages of ripening. Or did we? The site determines some of this. The picture becomes subtly more complex.
Elevations & Soil/Water Relations:
Elevation Matters
There is a double edged sword of too low and too high in Virginia, with a sweet spot between. Recalling your high school physics class: as something cools converts from a gas to a liquid to a solid. Based on this, cooler air is technically denser, and settles to the low ground. This low ground is expansive, it is MOST of the land actually. This low ground has frost and winter kill problems. The warm air sits above it, on a mountainSIDE for example. But then there is an elevation at which the atmosphere takes over and temperatures drop with increasing elevation. In our area the warm band is 750 feet to 1100 feet. This is where the greatest number of grape varietals can be grown, while lower/higher sites may result in mortality. What to do if you are in the danger zone? -> shift towards hybrids and American varietals.
But this elevation dynamic is being expressed in relation to Virginia. Whereas, in a HOT region like much of Spain, the optimum sites are the lower valley floors that collect the cool air. Everything changes depending on where you are. Different regions require very different approaches.
Soils & Water
Or should I say slopes and rocks. In Virginia we need to mitigate rainfall, and we find that we produce the highest quality grapes when grown on slopes, so that water can both run off the soil, and run laterally downhill within the soil. Furthermore we tend to plant our rows going down the slope, so that there are no rows of roots acting as a dam to inhibit the flow of water off the site. Flat sites in Virginia retain far too much water. Whereas in a dry dry region (Spain again) these flat sites may be preferred to capture every drop of rain and retain it, internationally planting across slopes to stop water flow, and terracing to maximize the benefit. Rocks – simply result in less soil. Less soils is less nutrition and less water – ideal for us here in Virginia, maybe not elsewhere.
Once we’ve chosen the right vines, and how to plant them, then we need to adapt our Growing Philosophies. Many regions can minimally manage a vine, whether mechanized or by hand, and obtain large yields from fertile soils, with little disease in an arid climate. In the mid-atlantic, a great amount of effort goes into thinning the density of the canes/shoots, and maintaining the separation of canes & clusters. Anything stacked, layered, or piled, in Virginia will surely develop disease in the canopy and fruit. We need to have conditions that allow the vine to dry as quickly as possible after rain or dew – meaning air movement, sunlight, and as needed spray coverage. The upside here is with a properly maintained canopy, much fewer sprays are needed, with far softer materials, especially as the season progresses.
In Sum
Upon embracing the factors that define Virginia, quality arises. Connect the right grape varietal with a good site and proper management, and we’re well on our way to consistent quality. The proof of these vineyard aspects being properly tended to is the ability to produce a consistently high wine WITH truly minimalist and clean cellar practices. After all, if the winemaker isn’t going to “fix” it in the cellar, then the quality of the grapes is the one defining factor in the quality of the wine.
This post is a continuation for the Significance of Winter Pruning post, offering a brief insight into the evolution of Arterra’s innovative pruning technique.
Winter pruning resets the vine, both in terms of defining the upcoming seasons potential crop load, but also the intended density of the vine, and facilitating the vine’s growth habit. Over my 22 seasons growing grapes in Fauquier County, Virginia, i have tried to optimize quality, while stabilizing yields. In the past, I found each pruning technique had its good and bad aspects. I’ve evolved into my third approach to pruning, one that does mirror some “pre-industrial” techniques, but overall in our application to Virginia is inherently a new approach. I’m very excited, because I have not yet discovered a down side to my new system.
In order to understand what I am currently doing, we need to revisit the predecessor techniques. But simply put, in recent history amidst “industrial era” viticulture – the vine has always been trained with a vertical trunk (or two), then fixed horizontally along a “fruiting wire”, and the current seasons growth ascends as parallel & vertical canes from the horizontal fruiting wire infrastructure.
Virginia started with something called “Cordon-Trained & Spur Pruned.” It copied what was prominent in California – which was developed in California to facilitate mechanization. We’ll explain shortly what this is, but I wasn’t fond of it. Meanwhile, I had seen some photographs in trade magazines of vines in the vineyards of a top Chateau in France, and I replicated those. This in general is called “Cane Pruning”, often in the “old-world” it is called Guyot (either single guyot if it has one arm going one direction from the trunk, or double guyot if it has two arms going in opposite directions from the trunk).
CANE PRUNED
Here is what a cane pruned vine looks like:
Cane Pruned
The vine ultimately has everything from the previous year removed except the two central canes, which are selected and tied to the fruiting wire in winter. The buds along those canes will be the growing points for the upcoming seasons canopy and crop. This was a graceful process, facilitated “self-regulation” of density by the vine, was extremely efficient come time for shoot thinning in the spring, and kept the vine healthy by minimizing “old wood.” I loved it. But as the climate changed, different issues developed within different varietals. Sometimes the central canes were weak and there were not ideal renewal options to select and lay on the wire; or growth would be weak midway along the cane leaving a gap of productivity; or frost would have a bigger impact on so few buds; or bud necrosis would damage the upcoming crop due to winter volatility. The issues combined became significant enough to instigate the need for change.
Cordon-Trained and Spur Pruned
In pursuit of stabilizing productivity in the face of frost and winter volatility, I converted to “Cordon-Trained & Spur Pruned”, not because it in & of itself solved any of these problems, but because Virginians had evolved a very intelligent adaptation that did solve the problems. Effectively “Cordon-Trained & Spur Pruned” is continuing the trunk up & out horizontally along the fruiting wire as permanent infrastructure called a “Cordon,” as shown here:
The piece Virginians added, is that instead of just cutting down to these “spurs” (growing points) in the winter once unwanted locations removed; instead these spurs were left with very tall canes/spurs of 12 to 24 inches, so that apical dominance would first open up the highest buds in early spring, while maintaining extended dormancy on the lowest buds. A final cut to the basal buds that were actually intended for the growing season occurs immediately as those top buds open: cut too early and the frost & volatility avoidance is lost, cut too late and the crop is reduced as the vine aborts fruit on the basal buds which are assimilated a “perceived” trunk. Effectively the upside here is protecting the buds we want as to the foundation of the coming seasons crop. The down side is that the increased “woody” infrastructure retains disease inoculum and also fosters chronic trunk diseases which lead to decline; as well as having spurs over time evolve into less-than-ideal locations and distribution. This system works, but I didn’t like it. The energetics felt clunky and burdensome; the vines felt weighted and sluggish. It was ugly.
💡The AH-HA Moment!!
In quest for a better way, my brain made a connection. I have always been fascinated by the goblet style vineyards of the “old world.” If you are inspired by wine, I’m sure you’ve seen the un-trellised vineyards of Spain, and some of the oldest California vineyards. Multiple trunks in a goblet formation. It’s also called sprawl; it’s kind of like a bunch of spiders in the fields. But it can’t work in the mid-Atlantic, as these vines focus fruit towards the vine center, and trap dampness & humidity. BUT – if we took the multiple trunks that form the goblet, and applied them in linear fashion to a trellis, we adapt this “pre-industrial” approach to our Virginia conditions.
Ultimately we are growing 3 to 4 trunks per vine, and originating fewer shoots from the “head” of each trunk, as opposed to so many more spurs on a horizontal cordon. It can be called “head trained & spur pruned”. This is simple to train young vines into, but it is a challenge to convert older vines. We have focused on fostering growth points lower on the vine, to establish new trunks. These multiple trunks replace the horizontal growth – eliminating horizontal growth. Each trunk has a split at the top to retain two spurs, each spur will produce 2 shoots in the upcoming season, resulting in 4 shoots per trunk/head. The following winter those 4 shoots will be re-thinned to 2 spurs.
Previous Season Head with 4 Shoots
Same Head Thinned Back to 2 Spurs for Upcoming Season.
Photo of a finished pruned vine – awaiting the shortening of the spurs as spring growth starts.
The Fan
In this system we have all the upsides: spacing & delayed dormancy to protect the crop, and less “old wood”. I don’t see any of the downsides. And best yet – the vines are happy. This is a vertical oriented growth habit, which perfectly mirrors how vines grow in nature. We no longer have a vine growing up, then horizontal, the up again. Instead we have a lovely upward growth and energetic through spring, and a graceful downward energetic flow during fall & ripening.
It does not have a specific name yet – I don’t know if it ever will. My buddies joking called it the “Murray Sprawl.” I think of it as a fan, since the base of the vine fans into multiple trunks, each of which fan into multiple spurs, each of which fan into multiple shoots – reminiscent of asian fans – which are graceful and beautiful.
I’m super excited to have a pruning system that makes sense, has no down-side, and inherently facilitates the vines natural growth habit, expressing grace and beauty.
Great Years & Good Years… That’s the bench mark for a reputable wine region. Nothing less is acceptable. When truly minimalist practices are applied in the cellar, this level of consistency must be derived from the grape itself, because it isn’t coming from cellar corrections. Hence the grape must be a fit for the region.
Certain grapes rise to the “impressive” category on this list of consistent quality; that’s Tannat, but its borderline winter hardiness keeps its acreage in Virginia to a select few ideally temperature moderated sites – these are mountainside plantings of elevation within the thermal inversion layer.
Once we have survival conditions – our diurnal pattern as a viticulture region with warm nights to accompany the warm days – makes Virginia the perfect fit, as those warm nights soften the acidity that otherwise overwhelm the wine in a classic coastal maritime climate (regions with cool nights). The saving grace is that Tannat has a programmed ability to overcome the wet soils of a mid-Atlantic autumn ripening season. In the typical year, approximately mid-September the vines are cued that the season is ending, their growth and water uptake ceases, and the berries begin to dehydrate. By the start of October in conventional mindset it is picked to preserve yield volume prior to dehydration; whereas allowing continued dehydration of as much as 1/3 of the juice yield leads to that “impressive” slot on the list. That’s where things get exciting.
Our wettest years, notably 2018, produced outstanding wine from Tannat. Admittedly in such a year as 2018 a quantifiable portion of the fruit was removed as it succumbed to pathogens, but this allowed the remaining fruit to prosper to this phase of dehydration based concentration.
The wines are incredibly dark, intensely concentrated, and impressively balanced as a truly complete palate profile – without need of blending components. Often producing high alcohol, the natural acidity and density balance and thus do not show hot alcohol domination.
This is a grape that when grown in the right place, with proper viticultural attention, proceeds to “make itself” in the cellar. This is an ideal grape to produce a “true terroir” wine. This is distinctive. This is my passion.
For many of us, there is no going back. Not only do we feel better in response to drinking clean & natural wines; but also greater complexity, depth, and vivid flavors offer us a more interesting wine. At Arterra, we take pride and pleasure opening the door to clean wines for our customers.
But why? … “Jason – how did you get into this?”
It’s not a short answer; it rarely is when you are passionate about something. So here you go, as short as I can be!
I’m a farmer, always have been. I grew up loving every minute of driving tractors, tending to animals, and cultivating plants. So ultimately my goal is to grow the best quality grapes.
My second goal is that in my wines, we taste NOTHING that didn’t come from those grapes. So, it’s quality ingredients first. And I learned viticulture as a unique form of agriculture. Simply put, if you only want to taste characteristics originating from the grape, then you can’t add or change anything. And thus we begin.
Taking the Leap
After 3 years of using commercial yeast and sulfite & new oak (nothing else because again I was never taught conventional winemaking, and I assumed – correctly – that good fruit would solve most of the problems), I took the leap. I alone concluded there were much more interesting characteristics in the grapes than I was getting in the wine. Or: the better my wine got the more it tasted like everybody else’s good wine.
Knowing that some of the greatest wines of all time (and that all wines prior to the 1970’s) were made with Native Yeast Fermentations, I jumped with two feet. In short – it was a heck of a learning curve. But the huge benefits simply obliged me to learn how to control for the potential problems. It was learning a new system, a system I knew would favor the high quality fruit we work so hard to grow! After all, Native Yeast Fermentations cannot happen without well cared for , cleanly grown fruit. Not always an easy task in Virginia.
The Goal:
To grow the highest quality fruit with focused intention. Maintaining a fruit focused mindset in the cellar, using ALL native yeast fermentations, minimal cellar interventions and neutral oak. Showcasing a truly Virginia crafted wine allowing the terroir to lead the way, including all the aspects of Virginia soil, climate and seasonality to drive the style.
Everything solidified as Arterra was born. “The Art of the Land.” There were several major components. First, understanding that quality grapes + native yeast + non-intervention created a wine that is truly Virginia fascinates me. So, new oak was gone as a final cut to anything non-grape, and now I truly dislike oak wines.
Clean Wine for your Health
My wife Sandy, as well as a significant number of our customers, have either dealt with health issues that obligate a cleaner diet, or simply have adverse reactions to conventional wines. Arterra Wines do not induce the negative impacts of conventional wine, and thus ourselves and many customers now only drink clean wines.
Screw Caps and Clean Wine:
A critical step in capturing fruit-driven clean wines
The screw cap was utilized to minimize bottle variation, bad bottles, and cork taint. Over several seasons the change to tight sealed screw caps which protect the wine, forced a reduction several times over in sulfite. This both improved the wines and the health experience.
Our fruit is harvested without residual pesticides so that the delicate native yeast can survive; no other additives, balancing agents, or finings; and sulfite in the range of organic wines. Clean wine. Better wine.
Many believe the growing season ceases in the winter months. In fact, there is a lot that happens during the winter to optimize the growing season, including grape vine pruning. Winter is the time of year when the grape vines require pruning to define vineyard and vine infrastructure. There are many different styles and approaches to pruning depending on your desired outcome. At Arterra we prioritize high quality fruit production over larger yields. This has to come into balance with disease control and climate volatility. These considerations have lead Jason Murray, owner and winemaker to re-assess pruning practices in favor of ideal yields and fruit quality. We are seeking consistency while mitigating implications of climate change. In this article, Jason will explain the transition his vineyard is undergoing during winter pruning. This post describes phase 1 of a 2 part transition. As with all things wine related, changes will take time to come to full maturity.
Images of Pruning:
Classic cane pruned vine, with fully renewed infrastructure, ready for spring growth.
Cordon trained & spur pruned vine, with spurs tall until spring and a vine with spurs cut short as will happen in spring once the topmost buds on the tall shoots started growth.
A reference image of a head trained & spur pruned vine, and our first vines in transition to head trained & spur pruned. Yes they look awkward right now, but there is a bright future for them.
The vineyard, at mid-winter, as we are changing the pruning strategy in most of our vineyard blocks, is an ideal time to review where we are at and where we need to be going.
The changes are directly visible to those with some vineyard pruning and training experience, and is captured in these accompanying photographs. The focus: adapting to climate change.
Several aspects come into consideration.
First: Which varietals to grow where. The Seven Oaks site in central Loudoun is lower and colder in winter, and where have lost more tender varietals there to winter kill, we have already replanted Zweigelt and Blaufränkisch, and this spring planting Gruner Veltliner, all of which are more cold hardy Austrian varietals. We are holding strong there with Chardonnay, Cab Franc, and Petit Verdot.
Whereas the mountainside Arterra Estate Vineyard is at just the right elevation to optimize a thermal inversion, where cold air settles below our site, and yet we are not high enough to get the mountaintop cold either. This warm band on the mountainside allows us to grow the Tannat, Roussanne, and Petite Sirah.
Second: Knowing that we have two issues of concern when it comes to all those aforementioned Vinifera (european) varietals, we are exploring options that can make excellent wine and are more tolerant of this climate. American and Hybrid varietals are both far more winter hardy, and have a more diverse genetic profile that results in significantly better disease resistance. We have a partner site in the Plains with Mike and Oya Macey, where in 2020 we picked the first small crop of Norton, and it is showing great potential for consistency and quality. We will spend then next decade exploring not just french-americas hybrids, but a whole new wave of material coming from Europe where they are breeding domesticated Vinifera vines with wild type vinifera vines, and starting to offer some great options to plant.
What & Why? Winter survival is getting difficult, with a warmer baseline during winter, that doesn’t get the vines prepared for significantly low temperatures. Which is then followed by these dramatic one-night extreme dips in temperature, that many vines cannot handle. Disease pressure seems to be increasing partly because clonal propagation has led to stagnant genetic profile of vines, while the diseases have been successfully evolving and gaining the upper hand. This is exacerbated by a trend towards warmer wetter nights, when the pathogens grow vigorously. The new breeding programs are solving both these issues.
Third: what to do with the vines that we love and want to try to preserve amidst these challenges. We of course a better site, but even that isn’t fully reliable. So we turn to management strategies. In simplest terms, instead of cutting the vines way back during mid-winter pruning, we make our selections of what we retain while letting those remaining canes stay long/tall. The idea is that a vine wants to grow from the top to club up a tree and get more sunlights. By letting the vine attempt to grow from the top as spring starts, it suppresses growth at the bottom, and retains better hardiness in those lower buds. So we do a final cut just as the top-most buds are opening up in spring.
Industry Lingo: If you are familiar with vineyard production terminology, we are changing the pruning and training system. We had always done cane pruning, but it has started to have issues with winter bud damage, and spring frost damage. So we switched to spur pruning, which traditionally keep a horizontal extension of the trunk (called a cordon) with the spurs (growing points) along it, leaving those spurs very tall in mid-winter, and cutting them back as growth starts in spring. But the cordons have coarse bark that can harbor spring disease inoculum, and also are known for increasing the prevalence of chronic vascular pathogens in the vine. So we are in slow but steady transition to reducing the amount of old wood in favor of more young wood, which we are accomplishing by a shift to “head trained & spur pruned”. Which means multiple short trunks per vine, with the spurs right at the top of each trunk. You may have seen Spanish or old California vines grown in a “goblet” that looks kind of like a spider; we are simply using that apporach in a liner form with our trellissing.
Its all a work in progress, but the world is also a work in progress. Continue reading Winter Pruning Phase 2 for an up-to-date look at our pruning transition.
