We prune again

 

Solveig seated on the small chariot, ready to prune vines under the Decembersun. Not that bad.

This weekend our pruning of vineyards began. Under the sun. I am happy to realise, that I still enjoy to prune the vines. Very good, since we will spend most of our weekends until March doing this very important job.

This year we decided to preprune. All branches above the upper thread has been cut off, which makes it a bit faster to prune. You simply spend less energy pulling and dragging out branches, that have grown between threads.

Less miserable
We work in two plots. Both planted with Meunier-vines. Half a hectare is in a splendid condition, with a better yield this vendange than average this year, well below the allowed quota. The other half a hectare we have dealt with for a year now. We took it in a miserable state, and it supplied us with only one third of the allowed quota at the grapeharvest.

Now we are very happy to see, that it seems to have worked to prune the sad hectare very toughly last winter. The plants seem stronger this year, almost all plants I dealt with all had healthy branches and at least one as thick as my thumb, where I last year hardly saw any at all. This shows how much the plants needed good pruning. It will be very exciting to see, if they will provide us more grapes at the next vendange.

Pruning of vines in Champagne follow very detailed rules, I have written about my training in this here. These are pictures from the work this weekend:

 

 

Alain sharpens the knives. We use the good old manual stuff rather than electrical ones.

 

 

 

Alain prunes. First he decides which branches are the good ones, then he prunes them in the correct length, and finally removes everything else.

 

 

 

 

To prune vines right is all about the right number of these ones in the end: These are the buds of this year, and this is where the grapes for the next vendange will develop.