Experimenting with new varieties...

Pruning - Marlborough NZ

Experimenting with new varieties comes at the cost of sacrificing existing ones.

It’s that time again to prune the whole vineyard. All leaves have now fallen and the juice in the plant is receding. Time for the cut and taking some of the budwood from the strongest plants of the varieties we want to have more of, for top-grafting later in spring.

This is what happened and is still an ongoing process for the Sangiovese in the ‘Grandezza’, the new ‘Blaufränkisch’ as well as the magnificent Saperavi and splendid Nebbiolo. We prefer to graft them on old vines whose roots are anchored deep-down bringing up valuable nutrition's from the many layers of the different sediments in the soil. The second decision is to choose on which soil type to graft, which in our alluvial soils differs from gravelly/sandy to stony patches and all shades in between. This is a heart-breaking decision and leaves us sometimes with little choice. We have to sacrifice something as we only ever want to make wine from our stunning 11.5 ha organic ‘Grand cru’ single vineyard. A big plot of land when it comes to our handcrafted approach in nurturing our vines. Sadly, we sacrificed our wonderful Riesling and delectable Gruner Veltliner to have access to some strong plants in the matching soils for the new grape varieties. All I can say is, make sure you have enough stock of these wonderful wines we had to give up. I certainly will take a good stock pile home…


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