Ripping Out A Vineyard, Feeling Tiny

This is what a healthy vineyard looks like.  These vines were planted 4 years ago, so this is a very very young vineyard that will be bearing useful fruit for the first time this year.  The first year you plant the rootstock (develop a root system), the next year you graft the varietal (cab, pinot, zin, etc and let the wound heal), the next year you work on vegetative growth (shoots and leaves) and if there is fruit it is basically useless.  The fourth year is when you start to get useable fruit from the vine but it is not usually considered high quality, yet.  

 If you rip out a vineyard, it takes many many years to get quality wine grapes from a replant.  So it is serious business and only done when absolutely necessary.  This vineyard is in the process of being ripped out.  It was planted in 1985, which makes the vines pretty old.

But often age alone is not enough of a factor to rip out a vineyard.  Usually it is age combined with disease.  The first step was to remove all the wire trellising from the vineyard.  That is why you see all the free standing vines.

After the wires are removed, the vines are cut down and ripped out and sometimes the land is left fallow for a while, or fumigated if it needs to be replanted quickly.  It is very expensive to have land in Napa Valley that is not producing fruit.

 This is a close up of the vine from the SFMOMA exhibit from a while back.  Is shows an exaggerated graft union between the rootstock (bottom) and cutting (top), in this case Cabernet Sauvignon.

Normally the cut, which here is in the shape of Omega is done on wood that is the thickness of a pencil.  This vine was only used as a model.

 This is the top part of the Omega graft.

This vine was used because it was originally planted in 1985 and it was time for it to retire.  Unfortunately, as you can tell, it no longer resides in the magnificent SFMOMA.

Quick side note before we move on about another favorite thing of mine that was on display at SFMOMA.

This wine (and it's super cool label) were made by my former boss and it's finally available from her equally super cool website.  

Also,

Ah the curse of not being able to be in the picture and take it at the same time!  I'm including the blurry picture because I want to show how gigantic this over the row tractor is.

I didn't get to drive it out of the shop this time, but soon!

This doesn't give a good idea of it, but inside it looks like a helicopter cockpit.  Lots of buttons, pedals, levers and blinking lights.

It's a nice time of the year to be out in the vineyards, except this year has been exceptionally miserable for allergy sufferers.  Miserable.

-L