Binding the vines

The next vineyard work following winter pruning is binding the vines and that is what we do right now. Binding means to bind stems on to their support rod and also to the attach the one or two vines that are left from pruning flat down on the lowest trellis wire.

A vine is of course a climbing plant by nature but we like to have them straight up the rod. So we must bind them upwards. Facing the elements the binding material degrades within a few years and so we have to replace it over time. Bending the vines to the wire is done for a different reason tough. Just like all plants a vine likes to grow upwards and would shoot from the topmost buds first and strongest. If we just let it grow we would soon have wine trees instead of a nice and humble vineyard. That seems nice at first but we don’t fancy having to harvest using ladders soon. So we bend the vines and strap them flat down to the wire. This also helps the new shoots to spread out and fill the whole trellis, leading to a loose and well aerated leaf area in the following season.

On the Photo Cabernet Sauvignon vines (aged about 15 years) are shown. Also interesting are the support rods we have here. These are tubing from old steam engines that were scrapped in the 1960s. We bought them back then and they are now supporting their second vineyard. So old technology is still useful here :-)