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The leaves fell off the vines in the fall and the vines are in their dormant period. This is when you will find a thick haze in the skies of Burgundy. The dead wood that has been pruned off the vines is burned in the fields, either in large piles at the end of the rows or in the traditional wheel barrow that is rolled along by the vineyard workers as they cut and burn as they go. No matter which method you use, it is difficult work, especially when often times the outside temperatures are quite cold. From The Wines of Burgundy by Sylvain Pitiot and Jean-Charles Servant: Pruning is an important and delicate operation which demands a good eye and good judgement. The general principles involved are continued by the style of training in use locally which in turn depends on grape-variety, soil and climate. But circumstances alter cases and the vigneron has to go about his task on a case-by-case basis. Each plant poses its own particular problems, calling not only for good sense, but also demanding that just allowance be made for such secondary considerations as the number of canes, the age of the vine, planting density, etc. Left to itself, the vine would put out a mass of useless branches which would exhaust its strength and interfere with regular fruit-bearing. It has therefore to be domesticated just as an animal is domesticated... Pruning, then, requires long practice, real love for the work, and the experience that comes only to the man who carefully studies each plant in his vineyard several times a year, over a period of many years. Only such a man can train a vine to something approaching perfection. Pruning is one of those craft skills against which mechanisation is impotent: for this task, the machine is never going to replace the brain, the hand, and the eye of man... The Côte d'Or system is the "taille Guyot", named after Dr. Guyot who popularized it in the mid-nineteenth century. The root-stock is kept quite low. Each year two branches are kept: one, called the "baguette", is bent at 90° about 40 cm above the ground, tied in horizontally to the lowest of the training wires and cut back to a handful of buds which will produce next year's fruiting canes; the second is a spur (courson) cut back to two buds from which will grow next year's replacement branches. The vines are supported by three strands of wire one above the other, the middle wire being doubled...  |
| June of 2000 |
 About Burgundy |
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 Today in Burgundy |
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