November in the vineyard

In 1910 in November, work in the vineyard was marked by provignage, soil maintenance and stakes.

Here is what you can read in the Wine Trade Directory in 1910 :

Culture – In November we start the provignage and, if the branches are sufficiently hardened, the submersions and the shoring. We carry out the smashes. Pick up the dry leaves and burn them. The November manure changes the manure into assimilable soil when the sap flows in the spring. Grasses, straw, reeds, rotten hay, brushwood, ferns and branches, sunk thirty or forty centimeters in the middle of the rows, have a lasting and excellent effect as fertilizer. We start pruning in some early Midi vineyards.

Equipment care – Clean and store devices against mildew; tear the stakes from the ground and put them in bundles, after giving them a copper sulphate bath to protect them from rot and insect larvae; in countries where wire is used, loosen the stiffeners.

Nowadays in November

Provignage, also called layering, is little used in the vineyard. This technique made it possible to multiply the vines or to replace the missing stocks. This involves laying an August vine branch, that is to say well lignified, on the ground and partially burying it in order to promote root development. It is therefore a non-sexual vegetative propagation technique.

The plants thus created are then straightforward. With the phylloxera crisis at the end of the 19th century, the vines were gradually grafted because the roots of European grape varieties were sensitive to this pest. Thus the majority of the vines are now grafted onto the roots of vines resistant to phylloxera, even if there are still a few plots in certain vineyards where free vines are still found.

“Vineyard and cellar – 1910” is a series of articles that we present to you throughout the year 2020, month by month. The articles are taken from the 1910 “Wine Trade Directory” and describe the various works necessary for the grapes and wine production at the beginning of the 20th century.