A Year in the Vineyard

Blue Mountain incorporates many tasks in the vineyard that support its goals of sustainability and the growth of exceptional fruit. The following is a list of the main tasks presented in chronological order: (Starting at the completion of harvest)

• Spread compost and lightly incorporate (allows penetration of water mobile nutrients to the vine root system and helps to prevent the cover crop from becoming too competitive)
• Hilling up vines: (movement of soil to protect the graft union for the winter and prepare the vines for mechanical weed management)
• Any fertilizer and soil amendments should ideally be added at this time also.
• Vineyard maintenance and repair
• Pruning (December through March)
• Shred prunings: recycling last year’s woody growth (nutrients and soil microbiology)
• Tying canes to training wires
• Ploughing back: weed management (wait as long as possible to minimize the number of subsequent operations needed - just prior to suckering the vines)
• Suckering and shoot thinning: to remove unwanted shoot growth on the trunk. Shoot thinning of the buds that were left during pruning to obtain both good shoot placement and the correct number of shoots for each vine.
• Shoot placement: lifting of moveable wires to contain the growth of the vines
• Fruit thinning: green harvest to target a desired yield for the quality of fruit to be harvested (dependent upon season and variety)
• Trimming of the vines: manage the photosynthetic area, remove unwanted vegetation and focus vine on fruit maturity
• Vineyard clean up: removal of unwanted weeds (hand hoeing)
• Harvest: hand harvest is a typical 3 week period