Pruning Day Two

Pruning an old Syrah vine.

I have always been sensitive to low temperatures and cold weather makes me very uncomfortable. Alright, I hate cold days. This is why I cannot believe that I have enjoyed spending the last two mornings pruning old grapevines at 2 degrees Centigrade (35 Fahrenheit). Ok, that is not so cold by itself, but there were 50 kilometer-per-hour winds blowing continuously from the North-West with frequent, stronger gusts which left you feeling naked.

Had you been there, you would have seen a handful of us, bundled up and hooded like astronauts, spread over a hectare of vineyard, pruning shears in hand, quietly working away under the howling of the wind.

Isaac pruning

Pruning is very absorbing. We are lucky to be surrounded by the sort of picture-postcard landscape you can see taped to the walls of thousands of offices around the world. You are right in nature, intensely focused, but working slowly. Watches don’t fit well under the 5 layers of clothes you are wearing, but if they did, you would not pause to look at them.

Our vines this morning were 35 year-old Syrah. They are wire-trained: double-armed Royats, which look like a “T”; a short vertical trunk, with opposing 90 degree-angled arms, each about a meter long or less. From each of those arms, each year, a few young “canes” are allowed to sprout and develop. At the end of the year they are pruned back leaving just enough length of it to have enough buds to sprout canes the next Spring. With time, the sprouting points from the arms collect knotty wood, we call those “heads”.

Double-armed Royat vine before pruning.

Pruning practice theory is simple. In a nutshell, you look at the vine, counting the number of heads it has per arm and noticing whether they are at balance with each other. Not too different from a hair stylist evening out unruly locks of hair to each side of your head, I suppose. You try to achieve some equilibrium, but want it to look “natural” as well. I’ve never liked asymmetrical hair styles and deeply dislike mathematical symmetry so I suppose I’m off to a good start. The quid of the question is how to decide on the small number of lucky canes and buds that will stay and which ones will be cut off completely. In Catalan at least, the nomenclature is enough to scare you away: You take eyes out, chop heads off, inflict wounds, let them shed tears, and so on.

Double-armed Royat vine after pruning.

There is nothing to fear, really. Pruning often seems drastic to the uninitiated, but it is a beautiful and very creative task, which makes the plant more vigorous and productive, and less prone to disease. There is of course much more to say about pruning but, perhaps this is enough for a first post.