Vine Pruning 2021

Pruning 2021: the pruning of our vines has come to an end and this year too there has been no shortage of experiments.

As every year, we started pruning in the coldest months of winter, when the sap of the plants accumulates in the roots.

We continued the research started last year on the influence of the lunar phase on pruning, which we discussed in the article “Pruning winter: with a waning moon or a waxing moon?”. Given the numerous variables to take into consideration, we believe it is right to evaluate the results of our experimentation over several years.

But, starting this year, we have also started to follow a different approach to the pruning method itself.

We decided to follow the course of Simonit&Sirch on the guyot pruning of the vines, a system that we believe is more respectful of the life of the plant and that favors a better response to stress factors and diseases. Furthermore, over the years it leads to having a better productive and vegetative balance.

What does all this mean? It means pruning thinking about how the plant will react in the next year and setting the direction of the buds, and therefore the growth of the plant itself, according to our needs (e.g. adapting to the counter-espalier of the row) but also respecting the natural chronology of the vine.

Curiosity pushed us to delve deeper into these principles, which we consider very interesting, and which we immediately adopted into practice.

We hope that in the years to come, our vines will be less susceptible to Esca, a disease that unfortunately still has no cure and that leads, in a more or less short time, to the death of the plant. It is often associated with very large cuts during pruning, which create a gap for fungi or bacteria to enter the plant. The Simonit&Sirch method tends to avoid this type of cuts, significantly reducing the incidence of Esca in vineyards that follow the method.

We also believe that our plants will be able to react to water stress more easily during the summer months, which every year become increasingly dry and hot, because by setting the correct pruning, there will be no tortuous paths of the sap.

So let's try to guarantee our plants... a long life!

by Silvia Cirri and Linda Franceschi