Dirty Talk on WineBefore and After...Posted 04/25/2008 at 10:56 AM by DirkWhat is it about "Before and After" pictures that always makes us look? Maybe it is just the "people watching" nature that lurks inside each of us. It could be our societal obsession with diets. Since most of us don't check out vineyards or viticulture magazines, I thought it was time to mention that we are thinning (This is not a personal weight loss statement nor is it any indication of how "folliclely challenged" I have become.) and that it might be best shown with the classic "Before and After" pictures. Shoot thinning is an important part of growing great wine. It is slow precision work but if done properly can make all the difference. So, what is shoot thinning? (Later in the season we will have cluster thinning.) Shoot thinning, although I haven't checked Wikipedia, is the removal of the extra shoots that come out of buds as well as the suckers that come out of latent buds. (It turns out that vineyards in the spring give credence to the old saying, "There is a sucker born every minute.") It turns out that a single vine can have a lot of suckers. They are mostly centered on the trunk – conveniently known as trunk suckers vs. those at the head of the vine. Which are generally known as...you guessed it...head suckers. We are working on bringing more creativity into the terms used in viticulture but it seems that it is still in beta testing. Remember that suckers make pretty shoots but don't have any clusters...that may have something to do with why they are called suckers! Sometimes we leave a single head or trunk sucker. It serves to start a new position to keep the shape and size of the vine balanced. If done properly, it gives us pruning options the next winter. That is why the same people always thin and prune the same blocks. Removing the suckers is pretty obvious. However, the rest of the shoot thinning takes time because vines have a tendency to put out
more than one shoot from a single bud. We need to leave the stronger or better positioned shoots and remove the others. If we don't, we lose balance, we lose uniformity, and we end up with too much crop. Each of those factors would affect the vines and the wines we grow. We tend to shoot thin when the shoots are about two to six inches long. It's easier to see what we are doing and the unwanted or unneeded shoots break off easily. There is no need for pruning shears. It is quite satisfying work and it is easy to see the results. We insist on removing all the shoots that should go. We check our work. If we missed too many, we go back to get it right. On the other hand, we try not to remove too many shoots. Contrary to popular lore, it is possible to be too thin (when it comes to vines)! "Before and After" can be part of frost season. We have had a remarkably trying frost season in 2008. For those of you who know Aaron, our viticulturist, it seemed that it was a good time to catch up on how he is holding up to the pressures of midnight wind machine duty.
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About the Author
Dirk Hampson
Few winemakers realize the opportunity to build a winemaking program from the ground up, living and growing with the vineyards over two decades. Dirk
Hampson, director of winemaking and chairman at Far Niente, and sister wineries Dolce and Nickel & Nickel, counts himself among the fortunate. An
enology graduate from the University of California, Davis, Hampson honed his craft at some of Europe's greatest properties, and was the first American to apprentice at Bordeaux First Growth Chateau Mouton Rothschild. Hampson returned to the US and was appointed winemaker at Far Niente in 1983.
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