Life of a Grapevine: Dormant Pruning

Grapevine with old growth trimmed back. This vine has not yet been pruned.

The beginning of the 2023 wine growing season is underway in the Hudson River AVA.  

Each fall when the days and nights become consistently colder, the vines become dormant to protect themselves from the winter cold. They drop their leaves and the sap moves from the branches and shoots into the trunk and roots. 

The start of each wine growing season begins with dormant pruning. In the Hudson River AVA, dormant pruning is commonly completed in February or March. Wine growers will typically wait for the worst of the winter to be done in order to begin pruning. Since the winter has been mild this year, pruning in our vineyard has begun a bit earlier.  

When pruning, we look at the vine to determine if there was any winter damage. Then we determine which canes are the healthiest from last year that is nearest to the head of the trunk. Then the remaining of the old growth is cut out. Each trunk will keep two healthy canes which are then tied down to the wire for new shoots to grow upwards to create the canopy. 

When determining which cane is healthy, it is important to look at the coloration of the vine. A healthy vine’s cane can be determined by its golden brown hue. Graying and black canes that are brittle are likely to die or are already dead. 

Another determining factor to help distinguish a healthy cane is the placement of the nodes and internodes. The nodes are the location of buds and the internodes are the space between each future bud. The ideal space between each node is 1 - 2 inches. This will allow proper growth of the canopy and fruit. However, there are some vines which produce inferior canes called bull canes. These canes are thicker with wider internodes, and they produce lower quality yields. 

If there are signs of a trunk that is unhealthy we look to train up a new trunk. This happens when there is winter injury and disease. In the years after the polar vortex of 2014 and 2015, we had to train up many new trunks because of the winter damage from the consistent polar temperatures. 

There are lots of decisions to make when pruning a vine. However, the outcome in the fall is what we look forward to, and work we begin doing now determines the quality of wine we grow. 

Cheers to the start of the 2023 season!