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A heavy-vigour year means plenty of work managing shoots and leaves, but it also gives us an opportunity to prepare the vines for the future.
Across most of our vineyard blocks, we’re training suckers from the bottom of the vines to eventually replace the current trunks.
This is called retrunking.
We generally replace a vine’s trunk every six to ten years. Inside each trunk are the xylem and phloem, which carry water, nutrients, and energy through the plant.
Think of them as the vine’s internal highway system. Over time, the trunks can become cracked or brittle from cold winters, weather events, machinery, and general wear and tear.
Training a new trunk gives the vine a stronger, more efficient route for moving everything it needs from its roots to its leaves and fruit. It’s A vineyard job that doesn’t look particularly exciting, but it can make a real difference over the life of the vine.
Toward the end of July, the vines should begin moving into the next stage of the season: fruit maturation.
This transition is called véraison.
It’s when the berries begin to soften, accumulate sugar, and (if they’re red grapes) start changing colour.
We usually begin seeing the early signs somewhere around July 21 to 25.
Even though we are only a few weeks past the summer solstice, the vines can already sense that the days are slowly getting shorter. They begin to shift away from producing more shoots and leaves and toward ripening the fruit and preparing themselves for winter.
The vines are still looking very vegetative this year, so harvest may begin a little later than usual. There’s still a lot of season left, but this is when we start getting the first hints of what the fall might look like.
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