T
oday’s majority of vineyards
honor the vine’s tendency to grow
up a support, so we build supports
to help them feel at home, manage
their growth and make the fruit easy
to harvest. The centuries of grape
harvesting have given us five main
ways of planting and managing
grapevines in a vineyard.
An ancient method visible in northwest
Spain and on the island of Madeira
is the overhead arbor that lets the
ocean breezes through. The breeze
keeps fungus and sunburned grapes
to a minimum — and the grapes
hanging right where they can be
picked easily. Sunburned grapes make
thicker skins, offering little to the taste
equation besides tannin and perhaps
color.
But arbors are rare. The most common
vineyard looks like the overwhelming
majority of vineyards in the U.S., and
this one in Champagne, where the tidy
corduroy of manicured vine rows grow
the vines along three to four-foot tall
trellises that permit the winemaker
options for exposing some of the fruit
to the sun. A little sunshine thickens
up those grape skins for a different
style of Syrah, or Riesling or any
variety, than shielded fruit produces.
There are a few styles of trellising
itself, but this method provides
roughly 80 percent of the world’s vine
configuration.
Even rarer than the arbor, the kouloura
or wreath, is the preferred method on
the island of Santorini. The fruit can
be kept in the center of the basket to
protect it from the sea winds; too much
sunshine and Grecian heat would just
as soon make raisins as grapes.
March | April 2020
41