Madeleine Angevine

Madeleine Angevine grapes ripen golden, pictured top left. The vines have a strong upward growth habit, positioning themselves with little intervention. They respond well to spur pruning. We train permanent cordons along a wire at hip height and grow the new shoots upwards from 2-bud spurs. The canopy looks similar to traditional replacement cane pruning but the horizontal cordons are old and gnarled, rather than a new cane each year. Just the spur wood is new. Winter canes pictured right x2,

With spur pruning you can pre-trim mechanically - we use an electric hedge trimmer - lighter and quieter than a petrol one, This makes the follow-up of hand-pruning down to two buds on each cane really quick.  These days we use battery secateurs for the hand-pruning; easier on the hands for old, hard wood, though a bit scary till you get used to them.

In 2006 we tried just the mechanical pre-trimming with no follow-up pruning. We knew it was sometimes done  in Australia and hoped it would help curtail the Mad Angies' vigour. We got a huge crop, a little later than usual, with reasonable sugars and acid, and the wine was delicious. But loads of small bunches that were very tedious and slow to pick. So we’ve gone back to full pruning.

Kernling

Kernling grapes ripen to rose-red. The vines have a bushy habit and an anarchic tendency, growing any way but up. Half of ours are pruned using the traditional, replacement-cane method known as Guyot.  Every year two fresh canes from the crown of the plant are tied down to the lowest wire, and the fruiting shoots grow upwards from those canes’ buds. The remaining wood is pulled out. The growing shoots are corralled with some difficulty to grow vertically, using two sets of movable double wires and a lot of persistence. 

The winter framework of a Guyot-pruned Kernling vine is upper right and, the full canopy, just before harvest, right.

Kernling doesn't fruit on canes coming from the first few buds of the previous year's growth, so it does not respond well to less-labour-intensive spur-pruning. We tried it once, got a very small crop, learned our lesson and now replacement-cane prune all our Kernling.

The hedges formed by the Madeleine and the Guyot-trained Kernling start to grow long and bushy by August and need to be trimmed. We use battery-powered hedge-trimmers to keep them thin and healthy, encouraging better bud development for next year by giving good sun exposure to the canes. We also take off the lower leaves as we go with the trimmers to let the grapes see the sun and develop good colour and ripe flavours for the wine.

In 2006 we experimented in the Kernling at the bottom of the slope, training the replacement canes along the top wire rather than the bottom, letting the leaf shoots flop downwards under their own weight. Why fight them, we thought. This was quite successful, saving summer trimming and tying-in, and we extended the method to the rest of that block in 2007. The vines are now at easy chest-height for pruning and picking. But the down-side is we have to de-leaf around the grape bunches by hand in summer to prevent overcrowding and maintain quality. The big basal leaves and side-shoots try to climb back upwards around the fruit, crowding it and given half a chance, encouraging mildew. Because of this slow work the total canopy-management time is about the same as the traditional trellis.

Overall this high-training is worth it, on balance, at the bottom of the vineyard mainly to combat badgers and spring frosts. Cold air runs down the slope so low vines are vulnerable there. The territory of the badgers from the sett in the lane includes these vines. High training keeps the grapes safely out of their reach.

High-trained vines are upper right in early summer and,  right, winter framework under snow, showing how the canes drop down.

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