A Year with the Vineyard

During the vine’s resting period, a harsh cane and spur pruning is performed in order to limit the quantitative potential and maximize quality. After cutting, the little spur has just two buds called “mixed” because of the production of fruit-bearing canes with leaves and bunches. The last ones, in fact, always sprout from one-year-old branches, never directly from old wood.

When pruning is complete, the bundles of vine shoots are collected (the twigs from the harvest). They are then piled at the end of the rows and burnt to prevent the diffusion of diseases in the vineyard. Ashes rich in potassium are distributed along the rows. No other kind of fertilizing is permitted.

Towards the end of winter, with the arrival of spring, the vine begins to awaken; we are at vegetative growth that culminates with the magic of budding. The bud swells and the two corky scales (bud scales) that protect it, diverge and fall off. It appears, covered with a dense layer of cottony hair. So, the young green shoot is already born with its small bunches.

It is the month of the inflorescences’ foliation and differentiation. Both phenomena occur in tandem with shoot elongation in internodes and nodes. The leaves grow along with the bud until it reaches its normal size. Leaf development takes about forty days. The buds, still clusters, start to take shape. Towards the end of April, the flowers are fully developed. During this period, the intense cold can be dangerous because it can destroy the fruit bearing shoots, urging the plant to emit some new ones but much later.

With the arrival of warm weather, activity intensifies as the vine grows. Women and men constantly monitor the systems, selecting the most promising buds to put in order on the rows. On the ground, constantly worked and never weeded, with the maximum respect for the environment, a number of different harrowing and manual tilling is performed around each stump.

This month we witness the second magical moment of the vegetative cycle of the vine, flowering. The flowers of the vine are arranged in large inflorescences, called clusters, as opposed to the leaves. It’s a beautiful moment but an extremely delicate one that brings joy and apprehension at the same time. Soon after blooming, if all goes well, the fertilized flowers will turn into fruit.

During the summer the work between the rows is intense. At various times men work on trimming vegetation, retrimming , suckering, bud nipping, bud removal, deleafing, and the thinning of bunches and grapes. All these operations are critical to maintaining the highest quality vineyards and get the best results. Naturally at Quintodecimo, these jobs are all performed manually because the experience and skill of each worker is crucial to the success of cultivation.

During this period, care in the vineyard consists of a thorough inspection of the clusters and further thinning in order to have a complete vegetative-productive balance in the vineyard.

The harvest at Quintodecimo is performed much earlier than other areas of Irpinia. It is performed entirely by hand and is divided into different stages of gathering, about twenty quintals of grapes per day, depending on the full maturation of the different plots. A grape harvest, therefore, takes about fifteen days.

The harvest at Quintodecimo is performed much earlier than other areas of Irpinia. It is performed entirely by hand and is divided into different stages of gathering, about twenty quintals of grapes per day, depending on the full maturation of the different plots. A grape harvest, therefore, takes about fifteen days.

In autumn the leaves of the vine are more beautiful than the flowers. Even before the harvest, they start losing chlorophyll and take on the typical autumn coloring, usually yellow for cultivars of white grapes and red in the red ones. It’s a wonderful and exciting show. It is as if the vineyard dresses to the nines to thank the Earth and men who have lovingly cared for it for eleven long months. After the harvest and the change in coloration, they gradually fall in the order of their appearance. First those at the base of the shoots (often beginning to fall before the harvest) and then the others. The higher ones sometimes resist until December. In addition to the now fallen leaves, small clusters, sometimes also known as racemule are not collected at Quintodecimo but left on the plants due to their low sugar concentration and high acidity.

During the first week of December the work of replacement of the battered support poles and arrangement of wires is carried out. After maintenance in the vineyard, digging over the soil is performed to prevent leaching by winter rains and to facilitate the penetration depth of the water.