Vines for beginners

[Fitzsie]

Having acquired our humble abode on the borders of Charente and the Dordogne, we have also taken possession of a few vines in our garden - about a dozen in total. They haven't been looked after very well in the past although we know they produced a reasonable amount of grapes last year which were left unpicked on the vine. Can anyone recommend a book or point us in the right direction where we can find out how to properly look after them. I've always wanted to have a go at wine making and if I can't give it a go now when can I !!

[Lautrec]

Hello Fitzie,

All the information you require regarding Vines and Winemaking is easily found by a Google search. Just type in Vines etc and all the details you require will be revealed. Saves money on buying a book!

[Ron Avery]

Most of the Info I have found in books or in English on the web refers to indoor  or under glass vines  Is there a specific English language site that deals with resurrecting old French vines as I am in the same boat as Fitzie?

We have two large thin brown logs sticking out of the ground on which a number of shoots grew after I cut the "log" back a bit, I let the strongest of these shoots grow up about 8 feet to a wire and  trained them along cutting off all the side shoots, the vines produced two bunches of grapes between them, both near to the "logs" 

 I have cut the shoots back by a half and taken them off the wire and let them hang down, I read this helps the sap fall/rise, so far so good or is this all wrong, any advise gratefully received.

[Loiseau]

We inherited vines growing against the house, and my inexpert efforts to tidy them up with fierce pruning have been incredibly successful.  In fact we planted several more vines and trained them across a wire "pergola" thing, and my pruning system resulted in having to thin out the embryo bunches of grapes  most severely in about June each year, for fear that the weight of fruit would bring the wires crashing down...

For what it's worth, my method is to let one long shoot develop, to form a woody "trunk", and trim off absolutely any side shoots until the trunk has reached the desired height. Then I let one or two side shoots branch out, tying these bare, light-brown stems to a wire running just below the eaves of the house, or to the wires of the "pergola". On the latter, I also let other shoots develop occasionally from these, if they look as if they could be tied into one of the cross-wires.  If they get too long for the space, then I lop them off at the end.

If you do this in Feb/March, it will all look very naked - but do not despair. Once growth starts in the spring it is usually incredibly rampant. And among the luxuriant canopy of leaves, you can see the insignificant little flowers developing into bunches of grapes. It's as well to thin these out once the grapes start forming; you don't want more than one bunch per foot of vine. So keep the best-looking bunches and get rid of the rest.

It's impossible to kill vines!  We had a crumbling house demolished and rebuilt anew - with foundations dug etc - and the vines that had been on wall of the original house still came sprouting cheerfully out of the soil again afterwards...

Angela (85)

[Ron Avery]

Angela

Thanks for your informative post

Just to clarify, my thick roots are only about 2 metres long and developed a number of shoots, about three of these I let grow, reaching up to the wires which are about 3 metres high and then trained them along, I cut out all side shoots on these  beyond one leaf. 

I now have the three long shoots on each vine which have hardened off to a red colour, these are hanging down and have been cut back by half.  In the spring, do I hang these back up on the wires and allow a couple of shoots to develop off the runner ends or should I cut the shoots right back to the root stock now?

I would know what to do if it wasn't for having to reach the wires, looking at the vineyards around Gaillac they seem to have cut off most of  the shoots back to the root stock, but they are not training theirs up to reach a high wire

[Loiseau]

Hi Ron,

All those shoots that you allow to grow, and which have turned a reddish colour will themselves become hard and woody just like the main trunk by their second season. If this is the effect you want, that's fine. Otherwise you may want to cut one or two of them off in favour of developing new shoots higher up for this coming summer.  It's a bit like a three-dimensional game, and it all depends on what you are trying to make them do.

Whenever I have cut anything back, I have always gone right to the point of origin of that shoot.  I don't know if it's correct, but it never seems to fail, and I haven't killed a vine yet...  If you're too "kind" to them, and leave say one leaf on a shoot, you can bet that that too will have sprouted a new long shoot by the summer. (Again, that may be what you are trying to achieve.)

I have tried to visualise your situation. Are those reddish shoots hanging down because they don't reach the wires yet?  Trouble is, as they get older and harden off to become stiffer, like the trunk, they might get stuck in the "hanging down" attitude and then have a permanent kink in them once you try to bend them up again to join the wires. If it were possible, I would tie them in already to the wires while they're still flexible. If they're not long enough, perhaps you could attach them to the wires with a long piece of string temporarily, just to keep them growing in the right direction?

On the whole, I wouldn't cut any shoots to half their length, unless you want new shoots to start from that point. My technique is usually to cut all, or nothing!  Don't worry if it looks a bit sparse when you have first done it.  You cannot imagine the incredible amount of growth that the vines put on and shoot out between April and June.

The training of a vine on the house or over a pergola does not involve the same technique as that used in vineyards. Driving through the Muscadet area the other day, I noticed that the vignerons had already begun to cut back to a knee-high gnarled stump, leaving just a foot-long brown shoot on each plant. By summer, the whole thing will have shot out luxuriant growth again.

Courage! Get stuck in with those secateurs, and just make yours do what you want!!

Angela

 

[Mpprh]

Hi

just a point ...........

You can graft different varieties of vine onto old rootstock.

We are experimenting with both white & red table grapes.

Unless you are keen on hard work, it is a lot easier to pay 1 Euro per litre for the ready made stuff at the Cave Co-operative than try to make your own wine.

We have retired vignerons in the family who make a few hundred litres to keep their hand in. With weeding, fertilising, pruning, spraying, miscellaneous tending, picking, brewing, blending & bottling it can soon lose its attraction !

Peter

[Ron Avery]

[quote]Hi Ron, All those shoots that you allow to grow, and which have turned a reddish colour will themselves become hard and woody just like the main trunk by their second season. If this is the effect yo...[/quote]

Hi again Angela

Thanks again, just the information I needed.  The shoots are hanging down because I took them off the wire in accordance with the Readers Digest book that said that they ( IE Greenhouse vines) should be cut back by half and then left to droop to let the sap run.  I see your point about the cutting back, all I will probably get off the cut back shoots are side shoots

I will wait until buds appear again and select new shoots off the old wood.

 I know what you mean about knee-high gnarled stumps, that is exactly what the Gaillac fields are like.