October 2016

HEARD IT THROUGH THE GRAPEVINE
​​The backend of September and into October we have dropped the canopy wires and now are shoot thinning, whereby, we thin out excess buds on the vines.  Buds grow on a ‘spur’ and we want 2 buds per spur, everything else including bud doubles, those in the crown, cordon and trunk all get ‘flicked’ off.  In saying that, we will keep a bud that may be a better ‘spur’ bud option (i.e. closer to the cordon) that would be for next year’s growth.
 
So a few decisions have to be made at each spur and with approximately 12-16 spurs per vine and 2000 vines that equates to 14 x 2000 = 28,000 decisions!  And we will do another run later to remove any late bloomer buds, or god forbid ones that I have missed!
 
We shoot thin so that we can control the amount of fruit a vine produces; it also encourages a ‘healthy’ vine, whereby it has room to grow without foliage competition, getting plenty of sunlight and airflow.  The clean spur with 2 buds will grow and bear 2 bunches of grapes each.  This helps in estimating crop tonnage so that we know roughly how much fruit/wine we are going to make, how many barrels we need, planning resources and logistics for harvest and scheduling crush time at the winery.
October 2016 Newsletter