Seasons in a Vermont Vineyard: The Shelburne Vineyard Cookbook (American Palate) by Lisa Cassell-Arms

Author:Lisa Cassell-Arms [Cassell-Arms, Lisa]
Language: eng
Format: azw3
Publisher: Arcadia Publishing Inc.
Published: 2017-05-15T04:00:00+00:00

Vineyard managers have developed a means to combat excessive canopies called canopy management. Canopy management involves several practices that aim to reduce or eliminate the negative effects associated with an oversized canopy.

Here at Shelburne Vineyard, we begin our canopy management in early spring, shortly after the vines break bud, with a practice called shoot thinning and suckering. All vines will have growth from buds other than those left deliberately at pruning, so it is important to remove these unwanted shoots to reduce canopy density. We simply walk along and rub off the buds we don’t need.

Later in the season, shortly after fruit set, our next tactic is leaf pulling and lateral removal. This involves strategically removing leaves and laterals in the fruiting zone to let sunlight hit the clusters and increase air circulation, all while being careful not to overexpose the clusters, as this can lead to sunburn.

During this mid-season time, we also do a fair amount of shoot positioning on our vertical shoot positioned (VSP) vines and combing of our Hi-Wire vines. These practices arrange the shoots in a more orderly fashion, exposing more leaves to sunlight.

Finally, in the later part of the season, we hedge our VSP vines. Hedging, or topping, is simply cutting shoots that have grown too tall for the trellis system or laterals that have grown out into the vineyard aisle.

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