Why Allée Bleue Wines South Africa can't go without Pruning of the vines

The care and maintenance of your grape vineyard is vital to the long term health of your vines, and ensures that they will continue to produce quality grapes for your South African wine - winemaking. Pruning grapes is the process that will ensure the best quality grapes and subsequently the best tasting South African wine possible.

 

Pruning is simply the process of removing unwanted parts of the plant to ensure that the goals we established for our vineyard are met. By pruning we can control the size and form of the vines, control the size and quality of grape production, and maintain a balance between vegetation and fruit.

Only new growth will produce grapes, so it is important that healthy new canes are produced each year. New growth may be held back if pruning is delayed during the dormant season. You want to plan your pruning to ensure that it is started early enough so that the entire vineyard is pruned properly and on time. Late pruning may cause the occurrence of harmless "bleeding". This modification helps in maintaining the vine's vigor and sufficient fruiting wood. Crop production is affected by either deficiency or excess of good fruiting wood.

 

What would happen if you didn't prune? Good question. You have probably experienced this in other areas of your garden. If you didn't take the time to prune your apple tree for example, the following year there were more apples on the tree than you could eat but they probably were not as sweet or as ripe. If grape vines are left un-pruned they will produce a bumper crop, however, the quality will significantly suffer. By producing so much fruit the vines do not have the energy to bring the grapes to the ripening stage...lots of grapes of poor quality is the result of neglecting vineyard pruning.

In fact, the purpose of pruning grapes is to remove as much as 95% o 98% of the previous year growth. This ensures that the balance of the vineyard is maintained between the correct amount of vegetation and the correct amount of fruit, and ensures the energy of the plant is funneled back into producing healthy, quality grapes for the following year.

It should be evident that pruning grapes is vital to the production of quality grapes. It takes quality grapes to make a quality wine of South Africa, so it goes that pruning directly affects the wine quality we are able to produce. This process will ensure the health of the vineyard and subsequently the best tasting wine possible.