Happy Holidays, fellow grape and wine aficionados!

Following are summaries of recent viticulture research that are finding that larger leaf canopies, and canopies/trellis designs that drape down around the grapes to better shade grapes from the sun may in fact yield higher quality grapes, and support higher production as well. Seems like the best of both worlds, and its a bit contrary to older research that suggested that 12 to 15 leaves per cane were ideal.

So, to apply these findings you may want to leave more leaves, and to not hedge the vines as much. And, perhaps a more ideal trellis is a single high wire, instead of the VSP (vertical shoot position) trellis that is currently most common in our area. Changing your canopy to single high wire or something else that supports more draping of shoots instead of vertical positioning, is not that difficult to implement, evidently.

https://www.ceresimaging.net/blog/vineyard-trellis-research-climate-change?

The December issue of Wine Business Monthly has two article that make similar findings. I will try to attach them to this email: