Copy link Copied Copy link Copied Subscribe to gift this article Gift 5 articles to anyone you choose each month when you subscribe. Already a subscriber? Login Pruning is not, perhaps, the sexiest aspect of growing grapes and making wine. Just ask anyone who has spent rain-lashed midwinter days on end squelching up and down row after row of naked vines, cutting and snipping and carrying bundles of old woody canes and scratchy tendrils.
It’s repetitive, back-breaking, boring work. Marco Simonit demonstrates the Simonit&Sirch vine-pruning technique. It’s also one of the most important activities in the vineyard.
Getting rid of last season’s growth and preparing the vine for next season’s plays a crucial role in dictating everything from grape yields to wine quality. Done well, pruning and managing the trellis and canopy – or the “vineyard architecture”, as it’s called these days – can also help build health and resilience, sustaining vines to keep them producing grapes for decades. Not surprisingly, the subject of pruning came up a lot as I sifted through the entries in this year’s Young Gun of Wine Vineyard of the Year Awards, the annual event I’ve been employed to help judge since its inception in 2020.
Not just pruning in general, though: this year, more than any other I can remember, two names kept cropping up again and again: Simonit and Sirch. Pruning properly can make a big difference to vine health and longevity. Marco Simonit is an Italian vine e.