An audience of two

Sunday February 10, 2008

There Will Be Sap
Spent an interesting day on Saturday helping to prune an old Pinot Noir vineyard in the Santa Cruz Mountains. The Wooodruff Vineyard (originally called the Matteson Vineyard, then in 1997 it became Ciardella Vineyard) is on 9 acres in the agricultural community of Corralitos, about 16 miles east of Santa Cruz. Close to the bay, this is prime Pinot Noir country - the highly regarded Windy Oaks is nearby. Fruit from the vineyard has been used by several local winemakers, notably Santa Cruz Mountains Vineyards, Hallcrest and the now closed Thunder Mountain. The new owners have engaged a friend of mine, Paul Romero of Stefania Wine as their vineyard manager and since it was a beautiful day I headed over to help out.

Pruning vines is a fairly simple job. You are simply removing most of last year's growth, leaving a couple of buds that will grow into next year's canes and from which the grapes will grow. When a vine has been properly pruned for a number of years the task is simple; there will be two canes. Prune one back completely, and prune the other back to the first two buds - little knobs the size of a grape pip, covered in a fuzzy white protective layer. In several of the vines, sap dripped from the cut. I tried to get a picture, but it didn't turn out that well.

If you don't prune it back enough, several bad things will happen. For a start the vine will grow very vigorously. It will put a great deal of effort into producing canes and leaves (which means more work pruning the next year). This in turn will result in a huge crop of weakly flavoured and possibly under-ripe fruit. Also the dense leafy canopy provides a home to unwanted fungal diseases such as powdery mildew.

This was my first time pruning vines, and at first I was a bit concerned about being too aggressive, but the advice I was given was if in doubt, cut it off.

This is one of the vines that I pruned. They are at least 25 years old; not sure of the exact age.