Diary from the Pyrenees August 2010 - Day 2

Day 2 (17 August 2010):


It was the only day during the whole week when the sun shone and one could even feel the pleasantly mild warmth of the wintry sun rays! I spent the day with Matthew, the vineyard manager. Taltarni means “red earth”. The estate covers 700 hectares, including 500 hectares of bushland and 200 hectares of vineyard area, of which only about half of the area is planted at the moment.

Decisions had been made to pull up some of the grape vines with less commercial importance and to focus on making more sparkling wine – this would mean more of Chardonnay, Pinot Noir and Meunier. Vineyard planning is rather complicated - it takes into consideration a number of factors including first and foremost market demand and trends, i.e. commercial aspects, availability of irrigation, contours of the land, aspect, sun exposure, quality of soil, pruning style, etc. With 100 hectares of vine plantings, he only has 3 full-time staff on the vineyard but with many more experienced casuals who would show up every year to do winter pruning, canopy management and harvest. I met about 8 casuals on that day. According to Matthew, he has been converting a number of vines from cane pruning to spur pruning because the latter is much easier to manage, less labour intensive and commercially more practical. He still has some high quality Chardonnay and Cabernet Sauvignon cane pruned, but the majority of the vines are now spur-pruned. I was able to have a go at pruning some inverted L-shaped spur-pruned cordon-trained Sauvignon Blanc vines.

I met the team of 8 pruners, with Murphy (or Murph) being the most experienced – he has been pruning at Taltarni for 30 years! Matthew showed me how to do the first few and then handed me a pair of secateurs and a bunch of zip-locks! Some key points to remember: distance between spurs on the cordon about a fistful, if more than one shoot around each spur, select the strongest shoot as next season’s growth, keep the first bud of each spur and cut at the second bud, prune in such a way to ensure the shoots will grow upright and away from the trunk, prune at the end of the cordon so that it does not interfere with the next vine and finally tie the end of the cordon to the wire with a zip-lock but make sure not to strangle the plant. As we were pruning, occasionally we saw sap juice coming out (“bleeding”). Matthew said this means budburst would happen in about 2 – 3 weeks’ time….i.e. he would need to make sure all pruning completed as soon as possible, and then cover the vines with a few sprays of fungicide. Vine height was about 1.2 metres and vine spacing was about 1.5 metres. Inter-row spacing was about 1.5 metres, wide enough to allow machines through. Thankfully, we did not have to pick up the prunings. After pruning, a mulcher would come through each row and turn the prunings into mulch cover.

I realized that pruning was a job that required not only skills and experience, but also physical strength, especially when pruning older vines with harder wood! I must have strained something in the hand holding the secateurs as it took me a few days to get over it (proof that I actually did it!)

Matthew took me on a tour of the vineyards: Western – Central – Eastern. We had to go in a car! He showed me a number of things, including drip irrigation (with a drip at 1.6 litre per minute), insectarian vegetation which he was most proud of, whereby he would grow plants that would encourage the development of certain species of beneficial insects including ladybirds and wasps, which would prey on the harmful insects. The objective is to install a plot of aromatic and visually attractive insectarian vegetation using mainly native shrubs and bushes in the middle of two adjoining vineyards so that the benefits could be shared by the two vineyards. He cited the example of how the wasp larvae would eat up the caterpillar larvae! While a very good practice of sustainable viticulture, the threat of the kangaroos is still very present as they could pull out the carefully planted shrubs or give them a good whack with their tails! I was also shown a couple of windmills which would be used to disperse cold air to prevent the vineyards from frost damage, mainly in the spring. During my tour of the vineyards, I saw a number of kangaroos hopping around, sometimes uncomfortably close to the pruners, who did not seem the least disturbed by the presence of these large creatures! Someone told me that they had seen the kangaroos munching on the pressed skins from red wine making and getting tipsy on them!

Common threats are powdery mildew, frost, millerandange (“hen and chicken”) and Eutypa Dieback (a fungal disease). He also told me that the rose plants at the end of the rows were now really there for decorative reasons. Research had shown that the mildew attacking the rose was actually a different type of mildew attacking the vine plant and typically the vine plant would get attacked by mildew first, thereby dislodging the theory of having a rose plant as an early warning to vinegrowers about mildew.

Matthew came up with another piece of wisdom. While I was asking Matthew the orientation of one particular plot of vines, he mumbled “Never Eat Soggy Wheatbix” (NESW) as he was pointing!

Work is tough in the vineyards, requiring muscle power and sweat, experience and instinct. I was lucky to work on a sunny day. The other pruners would have to continue rain or shine (well, with the exception of torrential storms). I actually quite enjoyed it – I felt that I was actually shaping the plants’ future (where the fruit would hopefully eventually appear in the next season!), so I was doing it with tender loving care (for an amateur who was still trying to grasp the technique!).

Lesson #2: Science versus nature. The forces of nature are strong and invisible but this does not stop man from interfering with nature to pursue our goals. Pruning is a good example. If left to its own, the vine will grow downwards following the rules of gravity. What we try to do is to change the way it grows and to manage its yield, so that we get fewer but better fruit! Fascinating!!!