The vineyard is growing and thriving!

In this blog, we take you among the vines and show you how we work with care and precision at the heart of our wines. From the selection of shoots to the first flowering, each step contributes to the quality in your glass.

After the sap starts flowing again in March and April, we see life returning to the vineyard. Young shoots grow day by day, restoring the vineyard's green colour (instead of the dull brown that dominates during the winter months). A new phase in the plant's growth cycle begins, and we are ready to get to work!

Shoot selection 

A growing vine can literally be imagined as a trunk on which carefully selected branches are arranged, together forming dense foliage. Foliage whose leaves are necessary to capture sunlight. In other words, foliage that must be large and dense, but which must also grow in a controlled manner.

This controlled growth of foliage (also known as the leaf wall) begins in April, when the shoots are selected. This is meticulous work that requires many hands and, above all, a good dose of common sense. When selecting shoots, we choose, plant by plant, the young shoots that will be allowed to develop and those that we remove manually. In other words, we determine which shoots the plant should invest its energy in, in order to avoid uncontrolled growth and exhaustion of the vineyard.

One of the reasons we remove shoots is, for example, because they grow on the trunk of the vine, which we consider to be ‘old wood’. The branches that grow in this area do not contribute to the quality of our final grapes and are therefore useless. On the contrary, they require a lot of energy from our plant!
 

A crucial place to remove shoots is the spur on the left and/or right arm of the vine. The spur is a small ‘woody’ branch about 5 to 8 cm long, on which, during the first year, one or two young shoots develop to form branches that are part of the foliage. During the first year's winter pruning, one of the two branches will be selected as the future cane for the following harvest and the other branch will be cut off. It is important to know that in April/May, there are 3 to 5 young shoots on the spur. Our task is to select 1 or 2 young shoots that are in the right place on the cane and can therefore develop into full branches. The “right place” is determined by the sap flow in the plant and previous pruning wounds on the vine. If you would like a detailed explanation of this, we recommend visiting our vineyard with a guide. Our guides will take you through the vines to explain all the stages of growth in the vineyard!

Supporting young branches

After selecting the shoots, the chosen shoots (and later the branches) are left to grow freely. However, this growth must be guided. We guide the branches upwards by inserting them between the existing horizontal wires that you will find along the rows of vines.  In addition, every year we stretch new wires using a tractor to provide additional support, particularly to support fragile branches in the event of strong gusts of wind.

Meanwhile, the foliage gradually develops. At the bottom of each young branch, stems appear that still bear flowers, but already hint at small bunches of grapes. This is an exciting phase: 'floraison'. When the flowers are fertilised, the first tiny bunches begin to form in June.

A manual process involving several stages

We repeat the process of removing (secondary) shoots from the trunk and training the branches throughout spring and early summer. This is intensive work: 100% manual, requiring us to walk through the vineyard several times to keep the plants in top condition.

Foliage management – balancing protection and sunlight

During the summer months of June and July, the foliage continues to grow and our grape bunches also increase in size. If the foliage grows too high (in Belgium, above 2.20 metres), we shorten the branches using a machine. This is because foliage that is too high would interfere with the plant's efficiency and shade the young grape clusters nearby.

In addition, the summer months are devoted to leaf removal. Mature foliage is necessary to capture sunlight, which passes through the plant and ultimately ends up as sugar in the grape juice. However, excess leaves around young bunches hinder the growth and ripening of the grapes. A lack of direct sunlight can delay the ripening of the grapes and, more importantly, excess foliage (sometimes damp) around the bunches increases the risk of (fungal) diseases in the vineyard. This is reason enough to send our tractor equipped with a leaf blower into the vineyard to remove the excess foliage.

Let the harvest begin!

All these steps, from selecting shoots to managing foliage, are crucial to ensuring the grapes have ideal growing conditions. In our next summer blog post, we will explain how and when our grapes continue to ripen, and when they will finally be ready to harvest.