Vintage

My Grandfather’s Axe…

With winter frosts now starting to bite and pruning well under way, vineyard redevelopment is also happening in pockets throughout Marlborough. It’s easy enough to see where vineyards have been uprooted and removed but what are the alternatives to this drastic (and expensive) method of vineyard redevelopment.

One of the main reasons for completely removing a vineyard and starting again is to be able to reduce the row width in the new planting, giving the grower more kilometres of row within the same area. After all, good grape growing land is getting harder to come by in Marlborough. It seems as though the Marlborough vineyard area is always 5000 Ha from being fully planted, however one of these days we will run out of plantable land. Why not make the most of what you already have and squeeze more rows into your area. A change from 3.0 m row width to 2.5m gives 22% more row length.

If your vineyard is already at 2.5m row width (or below), your trellis and irrigation system are in sound condition, and you’re facing an ever increasing level of trunk disease you’ve got options. Either replace infected vines individually, slowly replacing the vineyard over time (the “my grandfather’s ax” method); replace whole sections of a vineyard, removing unhealthy and healthy vines from a specified area (for example replanting an irrigation station) or re-trunking.

The two vine replacement options are pretty self explanatory – pull the old vine or vines out, plant the new vine in the same position. But what about re-trunking? As Grapevine Trunk Disease is a slowly spreading disease within the vine, growers maybe able to remove it by cutting into clean wood below the spread of infection and retraining a sucker that