by Rick Dunst, Viticulturist, Double A Vineyards, Inc.

Entire textbooks (or chapters of textbooks, anyway) have been devoted to the topic of pruning, training, and trellising grapevines.  This article will provide a brief overview of the main concepts of pruning grapevines, with emphasis on pruning during vineyard establishment.

Dormant grapevine pruning during vineyard establishment is performed annually with two main goals in mind – training the vine to the desired configuration on the trellis, and building vine reserves to support a grape crop in the future.  Crop control is a third goal of pruning once vines are established, but early vine development should not be sacrificed for small crops in the early life of a vineyard.  Once a vineyard is mature, pruning is used to limit crop size by producing fewer clusters with larger berries and higher quality potential. Read More »