Pruning bush vines at Sijnn Winery

A few weeks ago my boss (David Trafford, winemaker and owner of De Trafford and Sijnn Wines) decided that it would be a good idea to teach me how to make wine from start to finish. Naturally, I was stoked to hear this, and eager to see what was in store for me.
As I was in De Hoop a few weekends ago for the Potberg and De Hoop MTB event, it made sense to also fit in a few hours learning how to prune vines at Sijnn winery in Malgas, as it is only a 30 minute dirt drive between the two places. 

On arriving at the winery, David had already decided which row of vines would now become “Chrissy’s row”. I will learn how to look after this row starting with pruning the vines and I will finish in February when we harvest. Even then I won’t be finished as we will then need to leave the grapes in fermentation tanks for around 12 days on the skin before moving the juice to barrel, and then loading the skins one bucket at a time in to the manual basket press and then pouring the wine, one bucket at a time, through a funnel in to French oak barrels for maturation of 22 months. I hope you are starting to do the math’s and realise that only in February 2015 will the 22 months begin which means I will only get to bottle and cork “my wine” by hand, at the end of 2016. The wine will need time to settle, we will then need to label, sorry, I will then need to label all the wine (also by hand), it will be short of 300 bottles, and then only in 2017 will it be ready to sell. From start to finish it is quite a long process and very labour intensive.

I had a lot of fun pruning the vines. I was taught that we want to prune the vines in such a way that the vines works like a goblet. It should look like your hand clasping at a baseball only without the ball. You want your vines growing horizontly, with the amount of wind we get in Malgas, this isn’t always the case. On each bush vine we want to have five “active” branches each with two eyes. Each eye will grow in to a branch and on each branch two bunches of grapes will grow. This means that on every bush vine there will be approximately 20 bunches of grapes.

One other guideline was that you want to trim the vines in such a way that the vines are similar in height. David was explaining that water travels to the further point of the vines first and therefore the taller branches grow faster, shading the shorter branches from the sun and making it harder for them to grow at equal pace. We also wanted to cut the branches which see the most sunlight shorter (ideally) than the other branches which will get less sunlight, not always possible, but we try to manipulate the vines this way as much as possible, giving all branches a fair go. You see, there was a lot to think about while cutting these vines.
 
We worked our way down the row of vines leaning over, squatting and sitting down at times to cut the branches. I thought by the end of it my back would be killing me, but instead it was my hands. I thankfully didn’t get any blisters, but they sure were bruised. Those vines are tough!! When they get tangled up they are like wire and just as strong it seems. I guess it didn’t help that it was my first time working with a pair of secateurs?!  It ended up taking us non-stop 3.5 hours to prune this one row. I was very grateful that I wasn’t doing it alone.

David has suggested that we should be able to make just short of one barrel of Shiraz from this row. I was pretty happy to hear that I would be making Shiraz for my first wine I learn to make. One of the characteristics I love about Shiraz is the spiciness. As Sijnn winery has alluvial soil consisting of pudding stones and bokkeveld shale, our vines struggle, producing highly concentrated grapes, and each of our varietals have individually stunning spicy characteristics. I helped with harvest this year in February, and after pressing the grapes of the Shiraz I couldn’t help but get a glass and taste the juice from these grapes. It was already spicy. This means that the spiciness that comes through on our wine, is present before it even hits the oak barrels, which surely means the terroir has played a big role in the characteristic of Sijnn wines. Exciting isn’t it?
 
That was my first learning experience on how to make wine. Stay tuned for the next lesson.
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