Whereas taller total vines do exist in areas similar to Galicia with their pergola coaching technique, the roots of any vine often prime out at 37cm. It’s at this prime level the place the Vitis vinifera shoot is grafted in and continues to develop, giving us such grapes as Cabernet Sauvignon or Chardonnay. That is against the rootstocks that are composed of assorted crosses of vines similar to Vitis rupestris which aren’t used for wine manufacturing however are immune to the basis louse, phylloxera.
This new tall-trunked winery of 12.5ha comprises 40,000 Xarel·lo vines and is situated within the village of Sant Sebastià dels Gorgs, midway between Vilafranca del Penedès and Sant Sadurní. These are the 2 most distinguished municipalities in DO Penedès for the manufacturing of nonetheless wines in addition to the glowing wines of DO Cava or Corpinnat.
Nursery viticulture technician, Enric Regull advised Decanter that the inspiration got here after they have been visiting vineyards up in Germany the place the observe is extra frequent. Regull says that this extra peak provides numerous benefits similar to, ‘…higher resistance to drought, sooner forming of the vines in trellises, preserving fruit away from animals that will eat it, not needing trunk protectors when cleansing up vegetative progress and eliminating extra secondary shoots.’
Vines grafted on to after which skilled from the 80cm trunks are additionally simpler for folks to work given their added peak they usually may also be machine harvested in a better, extra constant vogue.
Whereas they’re seeing the primary fruit from these vines in 2022, they may solely begin harvesting grapes for wine manufacturing in 2024, however they’re so inspired by the outcomes thus far that they’ll be planting 17,000 extra vines in the identical method subsequent yr. From there, they hope to implement these modifications in different vineyards if the outcomes proceed to be constructive.
The work of Casa Jaume Sabaté runs in parallel to research that have been carried out 15 years in the past by Familia Torres. To see how vine peak affected maturation and different elements of viticulture, they did management vine plantings at the usual 60cm in peak, others to what was then, a non-standard 90cm after which conventional bush vine plantings.
Whereas these vines have been planted with a normal rootstock peak of 37cm versus the 80cm of this new winery, they discovered that peak did certainly make a distinction with the 90cm vines pushing out maturation by 4 days over these at 60cm. Apparently, the bush vines matured even someday longer than the 90cm vines, however sadly bush vines incur an incredible deal extra work given their innate construction decrease to the bottom and with extra branches. In addition they can’t be machine harvested which is a aspect to viticulture that’s turning into increasingly more mandatory resulting from labour shortages in addition to the necessity to harvest at evening to protect acidity within the grapes.
However the Torres research reinforces what Casa Jaume Sabaté has present in that with a altering local weather together with droughts turning into extra commonplace, evidently elevating the extent of vines planted in trellises is however one option to counter these challenges. Clearly, even with elevating the vines mixed with different strategies similar to heavy cover management, shade nets and having decrease planting density, there are limits when it comes to pushing out maturation and if nothing else modifications, viticulture may very nicely not be doable in lots of the areas it at the moment takes place.
