The importance of pruning
Pruning is necessary to control a vine’s vigour to maximise its fruit production. But how we prune influences a number of factors: how strongly the vine grows, how much fruit is produced, how susceptible the plant is to disease, how well it over-winters and ultimately, how long it lives.
“Pruning is so key. It’s the foundation of everything we’re doing in the vineyard at the moment. Our priority is building structure, building healthy wood, which will give us better quality fruiting canes in the future.”
Pruning in tune with nature
Prune too hard and you risk killing off living parts of the trunk, restricting sap flow and inviting disease. By contrast, the Simonit method advocates pruning gently, in balance with the vine’s natural tendencies. This means respecting sap flow, reducing cutting wounds and encouraging protective wood by allowing the vine to ‘branch’ more naturally than other pruning methods advocate.
“It’s understanding how vines behave and how they respond when you prune them. They’re not like fruit trees, which you can prune quite close. With vines you need to respect the fact that they do die back and that can cause problems.”
