HOW TO PLANT A VINEYARD BODEGAS URBINA
Planting a vineyard ostensibly constitutes that vineyard´s birth, but this viticultural operation can be undertaken only after a wide range of decisions have been taken. The potentially long process of vineyard site selection is followed by soil preparation and the choice of clones of both vine variety and rootstock. Decisions musts also be made about vine density. Following delivery from the nursery, the young plants must be prevented from drying out before they are finally planted.
The planting operation is normally carried out in winter or spring. It consists of simply digging a small hole sufficient to take the normal dormant rootling, or occasionally a cutting or, increasingly frequently, a growing plant. The hole can be dug by spade or post hole auger, but care must be taken, particularly in heavy clay soils, that holes dub by machine do not have such dense sides that roots cannot grow through them.
In dry conditions, a high-pressure water jet can help to create a planting hole and at the same time provide moisture to assists early growth. For large estates, a planting machine adapted from forestry can be mounted behind a tractor to allow workers to put plants into a pre-formed furrow which is then filled in as the machine passes.
A cardinal rule of establishing grapevines, as for other plants, is to press the soil firmly in around the newly planted vine to avoid air pockets, Dry soil conditions around the roots of the young plant should be avoided.
VINEYARD SITE SELECTION
Vineyard site selection embraces more than just choosing the vineyard location, as the decision will affect the vineyard´s yield, quality of the wine produced, and therefore the vineyard´s long-term profitability. The site´s regional climate, or macroclimate, for example, determines by virtue of temperature and sunshine hours which vine varieties should be grown, and the resulting likely wine style and quality.
For example, lower temperatures produce more delicated flavored wines, and hot climates produce wines relatively high in alcohol. Such effects are discussed under climate and wine quality. Vineyards are often planted at higher elevations to take advantage of lower temperatures. The site selection process might include evaluating climatic data from distinguished wine regions in an attempt to locate similar climates.
Modern science is creating new methods of vineyard site selection, especially based on Geographical Information Systems (GIS) and digitized databases. For example, identifying sites with the greatest potential by overlaying maps of the same area according to different selection criteria such as elevation and land use, slope and aspect, and winter freeze risk. Such approaches provide a useful alternative to the trial to the trial and error more usually employed.
Similarly, rainfall and humidity affect the likelihood of many vine diseases, especially important fungal diseases such as powdery, mildew, downy mildew, and botrytis bunch rot. The likelihood of these diseases can be estimated by reference to climate records. In addition, the threat of nematodes may be evaluated by knowledge of indigenous types, or the previous crops grown on the site. It may even be possible to avoid the introduction of phylloxera and other pests and diseases by creating a local quarantine. If phylloxera and nematodes are considered a likely problem, the appropriate rootstocks can be used.
The site climate, or mesoclimate, effects, for example, the extent to which cold air drains away, and the likelihood of spring and autumn frost. A site´s proximity to bodies of water such as lakes can be important in providing protection from injury do to particularly low temperatures. These attributes depend on local topography.
The balance between rainfall and evaporation indicates the likelihood of drought, and for some regions at least whether irrigation is desirable, and the amount of water required. In many parts of the world availability of high-quality water for irrigation is an essential factor in site selection. This may involve locating vineyards near streams or rivers, or with access to underground water, or opportunities to build dams.
Soil conditions present at the site will determine vineyard vigour, with deep, fertile soils, for example leading to vigorous growth and the possibility of high yields, but the concomitant need to manage problems this creates canopy management. Premium-quality vineyards are typically found on soils with low water-holding capacity, and low soil fertility. Site selection normally involves a process of soil mapping and physical and chemical analysis of soil samples. This allows potential problem such as poor drainage or soil acidity to be treated appropriately before the vineyard is planted. Knowledge of soil depth indicates likely vine vigour.
Vegetation growing at the site, and the productivity and quality of other agricultural crops grown in the regions, can be used as an indicator of the vineyard performance. The types of trees present give guidance as to the soil properties and their size for their age indicates soil fertility and water supply.
SOIL PREPARATION
Soil preparation, the treatment of soil before planting a vineyard, can be an important viticultural operation. Proper attention at this stage can determinate the long-term success or otherwise of a vineyard.
Having selected the best possible site and vineyard layout, and assured suitable drainage, the potential vine-grower should in most soils undertake deep ripping along the paths of the future vine rows. This should be done when the soil is as dry as possible, and aims to break through any preexisting hard pans and to open up the subsoil to facilitate penetration of the vine roots.
If a vineyard is replanted, particular care must be taken to remove the roots of the old vines since these can harbor virus diseases or fungal diseases. If the soil acidity is high, with a pH at a depth of 3 cm/ 1,2in of less than, say, 5-5, adding lime will be beneficial. Soil testing should establish the suitable application of lime and other fertilizers. Finally, weeds need to be controlled. In most climates it is usual to grow an autumn-winter green manure crop to add organic matter prior to vine planting in spring.
CLONAL SELECTION
Clone in a viticultural context is a single vine or a population of vines all derived by vegetative propagation from cuttings or buds from a single "mother vine" by deliberate clonal selection. Vine Nurseries may sell a range of different clones of each vine variety, each with different attributes and characteristics and individually identified by numbers and names. There is no doubt that clonal selection has played an important part in improving both yield and wine quality from modern vineyards. But it is difficult to understand the effect of clonal so many vineyards are planted with mixed clones.
Clonal selection, one of the two principal means of improving a vine variety, the other being the elimination of virus diseases. Clonal selection is the practice of selecting a single superior plant in the vineyard and then taking cuttings from this vine for propagation. The selection is generally made with a particular attribute such as yield or fruit ripeness in mind. Clonal selection contrasts with mass selection.
New grapevines, in common with many other perennial crops, are produced by vegetative propagation that is by using cuttings which are genetically identical. This contrasts with agricultural field crops which are multiplied by seeds which are different one from another, although sexual reproduction leading to the production of seedlings is the means by which new varieties are created. In vegetative propagation, each bud from a so-called "mother vine" essentially gives rise to a plant of the same clone, except for those very rare cases in which a bud mutation has taken place.
Clonal selection depends on the fact that adjacent vines in a vineyard may be different, sometimes discernibly different. More often the differences can be established only after some years of careful measurement. Differences on this scale would not normally be expected from soil variation. There are two possible explanations. The first being a difference in genetic make-up between the vines due to mutations. The second being a difference in the incidence of diseases in the vines.
Sometimes the disease is "graft transmissible" and is carried from one vine generation to the next in cuttings. The most common and commercially important transmissible disease agents are viruses. Such disease agents are transmitted by careless selection of the bud wood or rootstock material used at grafting and thus a human influence, but it may also reflect the effect of viruses, viroids, or phytoplasma transmitted by nematodes or insects. In any event, infection, especially due to a virus, can have a major impact on yield, fruit ripening, and wine quality.
Importantly, whether the vine to vine difference in the field is due to mutation or a graftransimissible disease, the effects can be passed on from generation to generation by the cuttings. This is the basis of the viticultural technique of clonal selection. The process of clonal selection is necessarily long and requires considerable investment of resources. To make reliable field selections requires several years of records up no nine, followed by comparative trials of many different clones of the one variety for evaluation.
After waiting three years for the first harvest, five to ten more years are necessary to monitor yields and fruit ripeness. These trials are often conducted in several locations and with several rootstocks. Clonal selection should also involve making trial wine to assure trueness to varietal type. Selected clones may not therefore be released until 15 or more years after the initial selection in the field. And, given the possibilities of both mutation and the spread of viruses by natural means, clonal selection should be an ongoing process.
VINE VARIETIES
Vine varieties, are distinct types of vine within one species of the vine genus Vitis. Different vine varieties produce different varieties of grape, so that the terms vine varietie and grape variety are used almost interchangeably. Each variety o vine, or grape may produce distinct and identifiable syles and flavors of wine. Vine variety is cépage in French, cepa in Spanish, Rebsorte in German, and vitigno in Italia. Professional botanists favor the term grapevine cultivars.
All of the vine varieties we know today initially originated from wild vines. Domestication was made possible by propagating the best vines, either by cuttings or layering, thus producing genetically identical new plants. Afterwards, new vine varieties could originate from natural crossings between the vine varieties that had been selected, or between vine varieties and wild vines, or by selecting other wild vines, DNA profling recently revealed several pedigrees of traditional and widespread modern vine varieties.
Most important vine varieties used to produce wine are of the European vine species Vitis Vinifera. A number of varieties of American vine species and their American hybrids have also been used to make wine, however, although many suffer a bad reputation because of the resultant wine´s foxy character, but the dark-skinned Norton is a notable exception. American species are also used as rootstocks. Wine has also been made from a range of Asian vine varieties and from the French hybrids.
It is clear that specific vine varieties were recognized in Ancient Greece and Rome, since some are already described in classical text such as those of Pliny and Columella. The extent to which the vine varieties of Europe originate from wild vines or were introduced is not known. Also, with the fall of the Roman empire, cultivated vineyards were abandoned, and such varieties as were deliberately cultivated presumably interbred with local wild vines and native Vitis vinifera. The result of this intermixing over time is that many European regions have developed their own local varieties.
There are approximately 10,000 known varieties of vinifera. Ampelographers Pierre Viala and Victor Vermorel fisted about 5,000 different varieties in their great seven-volume ampelography published between 1901 and 1910. Many of these were synonyms, and modern French authorities fist fewer than 220 varieties of commercial significance in modem France. Italy and Portugal have a particularly rich heritage of vine varieties, however, and Galicia in North West Spain is reputed to boast as many as 1,000 indigenous vine varieties, vine identification and the study of individual varieties' characteristics and aptitudes is as yet an underdeveloped field of activity.
Vine varieties are often named for the color of their berries, with many French varieties, for example, coming in noir (black), rouge (red), violet, rose (pink), gris (grey-pink), jaune (yellow), vert (green), and blanc (white) hues. Not least because this is what usually appears on wine labels, this book uses the convention of adopting a capital letter for each word in a vine variety’s name, even though ‘Pinot noir’ may be botanically more correct than ‘Pinot Noir’. Examples of mutants are Pinot Blanc and Pinot Gris, while Sauvignon Vert is a quite different variety from Sauvignon Blanc. See individual variety names for more details.
Varieties were classified and grouped into families by Levadoux, but DNA Profiling is now shedding light on the true origin for many varieties. Varieties can be broadly grouped into three major botanical categories called Proles, which are related to their geographical origins, and to some extent their end use. Varieties can also be classified in more detail by their country or region of origin, although as some varieties are becoming more international, but this distinction is becoming unclear.
Varieties may also be differentiated by their morphological features, of which a range is used to distinguish varieties and species in a scientific activity known as ampelography, recently supplemented by DNA profiling. Another classification is by end-product use, and so vine varieties may be described as being for wine, Table Grapes, Dring Grapes, Grape Juice, or for Rootstocks (although some varieties, such as Sultana, are in practice used for several of these). Among wine vine varieties, some varieties are particularly well suited to different styles of wine: sparkling, fortified, sweet, or dry still wine, for example. Within each group there are noble varieties and those suitable only for lower-value products.
Most widely planted varieties: Of all vine varieties, remarkably few have achieved an international reputation, and most of these are French. Obvious examples of these international varieties include Cabernet Sauvignon, Pinot Noir, Syrah/Shiraz, Merlot, Chardonnay, Sauvignon Blanc, and Riesling. As an increasing proportion of all wine is labelled varietally, there is increasing correlation between these most famous varieties and those which cover the greatest total area of vineyard land. Nevertheless most estimates agree that more of the earth’s surface is devoted to Sultana/Thompson Seedless and Airen (planted to Spain’s relatively low vine density) than it is to any well-known wine grape.
Choice of variety: Vine-growers are rarely free to choose which vine variety to plant in a given vineyard. They may have acquired a planted vineyard in full production and cannot afford the crop loss involved in changing variety either by ripping out established vines or by field grafting a new variety onto the trunk and root system of the old one. Different varieties need different conditions of soil and climate. Cabernet Sauvignon simply will not ripen regularly in cool regions, for example.
In France, and much of the European union, the varieties permitted may be regulated. Some of these restrictions can be traced back to the Middle Ages, like pinot noir, but formalization took place from 1935 with the appellation contrôlée (AC) laws which authorize only specified varieties for each appellation, distinguishing between principal and secondary varieties. Similarly, some varieties were completely banned (although it required more than 30 years for this law to have its effect).
For the production of more basic vin de table, l’Institut des Vins de Consommation Courante (IVCC, the precursor of ONIVIT) decreed in 1953 for each viticultural region three classifications of varieties: recommended, authorized, and tolerated until eventual removal. These laws have subsequently been overtaken by EU laws with the similar intent of allowing only specified varieties.
In the New World, the choice of vine variety or varieties is often in practice determined by the style of wine that is eventually desired, many of them involving just one vine variety (typically sold as a varietal wine). Examples of mono-varietal AC wines within France are Muscat de Frontignan, Muscadet, and Sancerre.
Blends of two varieties often include those which are complementary, such as the productive and full-bodied Marsanne mixed with the lighter, rarer Roussanne for the white Hermitage, or the lightly coloured Aramon deepened by Alicante-Bouschet. Celebrated blends of three varieties include Semillon, Sauvignon Blanc, and Muscadelle in Sauternes, and Pinot Noir, Chardonnay, and Meunier in champagne. Even more complex blends of varieties are in red bordeaux and in Chadutauneuf-du-Pape, both styles which are emulated in the New World.
The mix of vine varieties that go into a single wine is called an assemblage in French and uvaggio in Italian and the mix of vine varieties that are planted on a single property, appellation or region, is called encépagement in French and does not exist in other languages. Varieties themselves are often subdivided into various clones. While particular clones of many varieties have been selected through performance evaluation by clonal selection, in many cases they cannot be separated by appearance.
