DESUCKERING GRAPE VINES AT BODEGAS URBINA
The first job in mid May is to desucker the vines, to remove any non fruitful shoots "suckers". Encouraging the vine to focus its energies on the fruit bearing shoots. The right time to do suckering is after bud break, between April and May. Waiting longer causes the suckers to get larger, harden, and lignify, or become woody. Then the suckers are more difficult to remove. Suckering by hand requires constantly bending down, getting up, and making repetitive motions with your hands or other tools.
Budburst marks the start of seasonal growth and with it the spring and summer viticulture maintenance and a series of tasks aimed at limiting yields and promoting good quality fruit. Suckering is the process of removing the small shoots, or suckers, that grapevine trunks put out in the spring. These shoots pull energy, water, and nutrients away from developing fruit. If we did not desucker, the vine would expand into dozens of branches that could form an impenetrable tangle, a dense jungle, a mass of leaves and tendrils that would prevent the entry of air and light into the plant.
Desuckering is an operation of green pruning that concerns the grapevine foliage. It is made during the vegetative activity of the plant and consists in the removal of shoots that are not fruit bearing and are called suckers. This is a key step in maintaining vine balance and creating a canopy ideal for grape growing. When we prune in the winter, we leave a certain number of buds on the vine based on our assessment of the vines capacity, health and environmental conditions. Given ample water and nutrients most vines will have shoot growth from buds other than those left at dormant pruning.
Its part of the way we manage vines to produce the best grapes for your wines. Suckering involves removing weak, sick, or poorly located vine shoots. These shoots are then clipped off from the vines to make room for healthy shoots to fully develop. Shoots are snipped when: There are two or more buds on one vine node. The buds are growing from the trunk. The nodes produce shoots that academics call “laterals”, but most vine grower call them "suckers". We don’t want those suckers becoming part of the plant structure at encouraging it to grow down toward the dirt. So, we break them off and it doesn’t hurt the plant.
Bodegas Urbina is a family-owned Single Estate winery situated in Cuzcurrita de Río Tirón, on the north-western edge of DOCa Rioja Alta. Four generations of the family have dedicated themselves to the cultivation of their vineyards and the production of wine since 1870. Their sole objective, the production of quality wines, has been achieved as the result of careful viticulture using traditional techniques, harvesting by hand, the application of organic fertilizers only, avoiding the use of weed killers and pesticides, and the use of indigenous yeasts.
