Domaine Gayrard - Organic Gaillac wines

Every year, in the world of wine, a new year begins after the harvest, as soon as the first frosts appear, with the start of pruning work. This manual work lasts throughout the winter (December to March), reshaping the vines and preparing them for the next harvest.

This is a technical job, requiring in-depth knowledge of the plant and the various existing processes.

There are different types of pruning in the vineyard: Guyots, cordons, gobelets… which differ according to the region and the approach of each winemaker.

At Domaine Gayrard, we have chosen to adopt “gentle” pruning techniques, respecting our vines as much as possible.

But first, why do we prune vines? And what is “gentle pruning”?

For many years now, French vineyards have been facing serious problems of decline. There are, of course, many factors to consider (climate change, mechanization…etc….etc.). Some farmers have therefore turned their attention to what they can change and improve: their viticultural practices. The vine is a wild liana that we have domesticated. We’ve turned it into a shrub simply by pruning it every year, in order to make it produce fruit and limit its natural elongation. We call this vine training.

As early as 1887, an erudite author, R Dezeimeris (and certainly others before him), began to wonder about vine pruning and its consequences. Guided by his curiosity and intuition, he took longitudinal cuts of vine stocks to assess how they functioned and, consequently, any malfunctions that might be linked to their management. In this way, he laid the foundations of “soft” pruning:

• No shaving or mutilating wounds.
• respect for sap flow.
• acceptance of vine lengthening.

Book: D’une cause de dépérissement de la vigne et des moyens d’y porter remède.

Gentle pruning at Domaine Gayrard

With an ever-increasing respect for the living world and a desire to improve, we took a closer look at the vast subject of pruning. We followed a training course given by Marceau Bourdarias, an enthusiast of the plant world who has studied the physiology of the vine. The experience taught us a great deal, and reinforced our desire to implement a gentler pruning technique on the young vine parcels, as they are the future of the estate.

The principles acquired are more or less the same as those set out by Dezeimeris:

• we only prune on current-year wood, or two-year-old wood if possible, to avoid devitalizing the stock right down to its base. What’s more, when we prune, we don’t shave (we don’t cut too close), again to avoid damaging the vine’s older matrix. This means a lot more work in the spring, because by not cutting as close as possible to the junction of the two woods, we leave buds (eyes) that will grow. These will have to be manually removed later (disbudding).
• we respect the flow of sap, avoiding strangulation or interruption to keep the stock in good health. So we try to direct this flow, by choosing one wood rather than another, even if it means abandoning one part of the plant in favor of another over time.
• we respect the nature of the vine by accepting its lengthening. In the past, when the opportunity arose, we tended to lower the vine by choosing wood lower down on the stock, and this greatly devitalized the stock. Nowadays, we only pull the vine back after ten years or more, when the various constraints due to its height are no longer manageable.

By implementing gentle vine pruning at Domaine Gayrard, we hope to achieve healthier vines, full of vitality, which would have a financial advantage, of course, but also, and above all, an environmental one. Indeed, healthy vines are better able to defend themselves against disease, enabling us to reduce the doses of sulfur and copper we use, while keeping the quality of the grapes we need to continue making quality wine. After three months’ work, the pruning of the vines should be completed in March, before the sap flows back up and before the first buds appear, which won’t be long in coming.

After that, manual work in the vineyard is followed by “spring” work: disbudding, tying up, etc., which accompanies the development of the vines right up to harvesting.

For the future, Domaine Gayrard has also embarked on the planting of young vines which will be trained as our ancestors did, in gobelet (without trellising).

As we harvest almost exclusively by hand, we are no longer obliged to trellis all our vines, and would like to develop this type of pruning for those grape varieties that accept it. This technique will enable the bunches to be distributed more evenly, with more space between them, thus limiting the arrival of disease and improving health, for a good harvest and good wines!