What's up in the Vineyard?

200,000 Canes

Rafael. Cutting canes in early spring is only the first part of the pruning process ... and by far the most "enjoyable."

Suspended in Mid-Air. After you cut a cane, it doesn't fall neatly to the ground like leaves from a tree. Thick, strong tendrils hold the cut canes tightly onto support wires and each other. So you have to go through the entire vineyard again and pull the canes free from the tangle. Tough going.

Tendril is My Heart. Old tendrils clinging to support wires in the Satori's first vineyard planted in 2001 along Buena Vista Avenue (merlot, zin, cab and petite sirah).

Fagots. (Check your dictionary, people!) After the pulling, the piling.

Moving the Pile. After piling, pick up the piles, and pile 'em high into truck and trailer.

Let's Do the Math. To put this pruning play into perspective, we have about 9,200 vines in our 15 acres of estate vineyards. About 3,200 have a quadrilateral support system, which means each vine has 4 cordons, about 5 spurs per cordon, and 2 shoots per spur ...  so that generates about 40 canes per plant ... or about 130,000 canes a year. 

Raising Canes.  The oldest vineyard at Satori, planted in 2001 along Buena Vista Avenue, features a bi-lateral support system ...   1,500 vines with 2 cordons each, 6 spurs per cordon, and 2 shoots per spur ... which that generates another 36,000 canes.

To the Bonfire. Finally, the newest, "head-pruned" (no support wires, no cordons -- more about this in a later post) vineyard, along New Avenue, features 4,276 Zinfandel vines, planted in 2007. Each of these has, say, 7 spurs each along a vertical trunk (they are still being trained so there is not yet a fixed number of spurs per trunk), with 2 shoots per spur, so that adds roughly 60,000 more canes. Add it all up and we have, on the low side, about 200,000 canes that must be pruned, pulled, piled, packed and ... burned each spring.

Burn Day? You can start ag fires like this one only on "Burn Days." Santa Clara County officials measure moisture, wind, weather and air quality every day and then make the Burn, No Burn decision. No smoke after Sunset. 

Slow Starter. Because canes are mostly hollow (enabling water to wick up from the roots through the vines to the leaves and grapes), there is very little actual wood to burn. The fire is hard to start and it will die out fast if T. doesn't hop on the tractor and keep piling more canes onto the flames.

California Gothic. Cane fires put up lots of smoke ... a lot of it a drab olive green ... which T. opines might be chlorophyll.

Not Much to Show For It. How can 200,000+ vines burn down into a couple of 5-gallon buckets of ash. Hardly seems possible. (Note the "Orbs" flitting around the super-hot fire at Sunset -- "Orb backscatter has been broadly interpreted as a highly variable range of paranormal phenomenon without verifiable causation — including invisible spirits, auras, angels, ghosts, energy fields, psycho-energetic artifacts, energy balls, etc." -- Wikipedia)

Bucket of Canes. Of course, grape canes can become beautiful and useful in the right hands in the form of wreathes and sculpture and BBQ fodder.

Grape Balls.  Our friend, Patrick, pioneered these sticky, hanging Orbs. He soaks the stiff canes in water for a day or two, then wrestles them into a sphere, and ties them in place with fishing line. Our friend, AhNanDa, inserts a short line of battery-powered LED lights into her Balls and hangs them from her porch ceiling. Grape Balls of Fire.

That's All Folks.  The canes are all gone for This Year. Except for the ones T. put into a bucket of water in the greenhouse to sprout (more on that magic later).

satori