This month, we will try to take you behind the scenes at Baglio Diar, among our rows of vines.
January and February are months of rest and waiting. At the same time, we prepare for what will be the new vintage.
During the winter, the vine enters a phase called vegetative rest. The plant stops growing and concentrates its energy internally.
This is a natural, cyclical moment, necessary to regain balance after the productive season.
At this time of year, one of the most typical and, at the same time, extremely important activities takes place in the vineyard: pruning.
Pruning consists of cutting certain parts of the plant (shoots or branches) to help it grow better. The cut is not random, but is guided by a specific purpose.
Why are vines pruned?
If left to grow freely, vines would produce many branches and, consequently, a lot of grapes.
However, this would risk producing lower quality grapes.
Pruning serves to tidy up the plant, control yield, help the vine use its energy more efficiently, and improve grape quality.
At this stage, it is important to make a cut as precise as possible to minimize the “wound” to the vine. In the worst cases, this wound must be treated with synthetic chemicals.
But, if you already know us, you will know that we work exclusively with organic methods: we cannot allow ourselves to do any of that.
While the vines are dormant, pruning is carried out between the rows where green manure is used.
This practice consists of sowing certain plants between the rows of vines (legumes, grasses, or wildflowers) and burying them before they flower, without harvesting them.
In these winter days, these plants cover the ground almost like a green carpet, protecting it from erosion by rain and capturing nitrogen from the atmosphere.
When they are buried in the spring, they will act as natural fertilizers, and they will do it exclusively in a plant-based way.
At the same time, these plants are nitrogen fixers. Basically, they perceive or accumulate nitrogen from the air and transform it into nitrogen for the soil.
Now we’ll take you behind the scenes. We asked Nicola, our founder, some questions for you.
– “How do you know when a plant needs to be pruned in a certain way?”
“In general, the pruning we do follows the Guyot pruning principle. This system involves one shoot that produces new fruit and one shoot that will produce new wood for the next shoot (fun fact: these two elements are called acchetto and spadda in Sicilian). Beyond this general rule, pruning a single vine depends a lot on how it has been pruned over the years, on the history of the plant.”
– “What is the difference between pruning an organic vineyard and one that is not organic?”
“There is no difference in the pruning method between an organically cultivated vineyard and a conventionally cultivated one.”
– “Does the type of soil or grape variety affect the choice of pruning? If so, how?”
“Both the soil and the variety have a significant impact. There are varieties that require the shoot that produces the new fruit (technically known as the “fruit head”) to be much longer than normal. For example, Grillo has a lower fertility bud than a variety such as Catarratto.
The soil also has a significant impact because the better the quality and the more fertile it is, the more we can play around with pruning, for example by leaving the fruit head shoot longer.”
Do you like similar articles? Subscribe to our newsletter and receive all our updates.