We picked the last of the grapes at the end of October, and since then, the vineyard has been resting. In dormancy, the vines have lost all their leaves and are waiting for the Spring to grow again. In the meantime, we are hard at work in the wind and the rain, pruning away last year’s growth and shaping the vines.
Pruning is the singlemost important task of the vineyard year, setting the stage for the following year’s work. A good pruning job will produce a balanced crop to ripeness, it will make all the viticultural work like leaf removal easier, and it will decrease the disease pressure. A bad pruning job at its best can ruin the next year’s crop, and at its worst it can kill a grapevine.
Pruning is essentially surgery, and by cutting into the wood, we are exposing the grapevine to possible infection, most notably from Eutypa lata. In order to prevent infection, we’re coating every pruning wound with an organic paste that relies on elemental Boron to prevent fungal contamination.
This Saturday marks the Saint’s Day celebration of St. Urban of Langres, the Catholic patron saint of vineyard workers. Fleeing from his persecutors in 390, he was concealed for a while by men pruning grapevines in the rain. There are several old German sayings that claim that if there’s sunshine on St. Urban’s Day, there will be either big harvests of delicious wines. While he lived, he was the deacon of Dijon, where many of our Pinot Noir clones come from. Adopted as the patron Saint of the winemakers in Burgundy, it’s a good excuse to drink just a little bit more Pinot this weekend and hope for the sun.
