Viticulture techniques

How to plant a vineyard

Vines can be planted in a pit or in a hole made with a drill. Pit planting is the older method. Seen from above, the pit is an equilateral triangle of 30×30×30 cm, 40 cm deep. The soil around the roots of the grafted vine placed in the pit is firmed with the foot and with irrigation water. Finally, earth is heaped over the noble part of the graft (“earthing up”) to reduce evaporation from the woody parts and young shoots until rooting has taken place.

For drill planting, either a hand drill or a hydraulic drill can be used. In this case the planting hole is much smaller than with pit planting. Using a hydraulic drill is especially favourable, because the planting material is puddled in immediately. At the end of planting the grafted vines are earthed up in this case too.

Source: tudasbazis.sulinet.hu

Planting a vineyard with a hydraulic drill:

Destemming

One of the very first stages of processing grapes. The point of destemming is to separate the berries from the bunches; its aim is to protect the quality of the must from the tannins in the stalk, which damage both the flavour and the colour of the must.

Harvest

Processing grapes actually begins with choosing the right harvest date. The most important factor in choosing the date must always be the quality of the future wine.

A trial harvest lets us check how ripe the grapes are. We examine whether the sugar content of the grapes has reached the multi-year average must weight typical of the wine region and variety. When the berries are sufficiently ripe, they are soft and elastic and have turned the colour typical of their variety. During ripening their acidity falls and their sugar content rises. At harvest, the varieties are picked and processed separately according to their ripening time.

A modern grape harvester: