The first steps of wine

The pressing and destemming are the first mechanical operations to which the grapes are subjected after harvesting, to extract the juice and the pulp from the grapes, giving life to the must that fermenting will become wine.

It is essential that the grapes arrive intact in the cellar and that the first contact of the juice with the air takes place during these processes, to ensure the least possible oxidation of the product.

These operations take place using machines called pusher machines, which are divided into two types:

• crushers and destemers
• stalk removers

In the first case, the grapes introduced into the machine pass first through rubber rollers that break the grapes, allowing the must to come out, and then inside a perforated drum in which a tree rotates that divides the grape stem from the rest part of the grape.

In the second case the procedure is winter and the whole bunch is first passed through the drum and then the remaining grapes pass inside the rollers.

In both cases there is the separation of the stalks, which come out from the end of the drilled drum, from the destalked pajama that is collected in a hopper placed below the machine from which with the aid of a pump it is transferred to a fermenter or press .

The destemming

The destemming is carried out for various reasons:

• Volume reduction: the stalks represent up to 20% of the volume of the grapes

• Quality of the wine: the substances contained in the stalks such as non-noble tannins, potassium and others, will not contaminate the must. In this way, wines will be softer, less acidic and more balanced

• Alcohol content: inside the stalks there is water and not sugars, during fermentation they would therefore have a diluent function, thus reducing the percentage of alcohol in the fake product

• Wine color: during maceration (in the case of vinification in red) the stem absorbs the anthocyanins, or the substances responsible for the final color of the wine.

Vinification

Once here it is good to differentiate the two ways in which one can proceed:

• White vinification: proceeding with soft pressing and dividing the must from the skins in order to originate white wines (absence of color)

• Red vinification: the skins and musts are moved inside a fermenter in which with the alcoholic fermentation, the skins give their color to the wine.

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Hibernating gems

With winter rest is meant the period of inactivity of the vegetative apparatus, due to excessively low temperatures (we consider that the minimum temperature for vegetative activity is around 10 ° C) in which we proceed to the selection of the buds for the following year with pruning.

This period elapses, physiologically speaking, from the complete fall of the leaves to tears.
In this period of time the buds are defined as hibernating and have within them three vegetative apexes, including the central one and the most developed as the only fertile and bearer of bunches (they are already present inside the bud together with some leaves!).

Weeping

With the rise of temperatures during spring, radical activity is reactivated and lymphatic movement is noted with the release of lymph from the pruning cuts, this period is precisely defined as "weeping".

In conjunction with the crying there is the beginning of the development of the bud with the phase of "cottony bud" which presents precisely a cottony swelling that still protects it from the cold.

We then move on to the open gem with the exit of the main apex commonly known as the "green tip", in this phase the plant is highly sensitive to morning frosts and frosts that could affect the fertile vegetative apex and therefore compromise the entire production.

The enemies of the vines

In this period the attacks of two animal parasites occur:
     • thrips of the vine
     • Nottua

The thrips of the vine

The thrip is a small Tisanottero (less than a millimeter) that winters at the adult stage in the roughness of the wood.

At the germination, it is carried on the newly originated shoots, on which the trophic activity begins, by laying inside the newly formed plant tissues, from here a necrotic zone originates in which develops the first generation of larvae that flies between May and June.

The damage to the vegetation occurs with deformation of the branches and leaflets near the insect activity.
This adversity is monitored by the application of blue chromotropic traps.

The night

The noctua is a medium-sized moth (50-60 mm wingspan) that hibernates at the larva stage of the last age within the soil.

With the arrival of spring, food comes out and resumes, at the expense of the enlarged buds that are blinded and of the young shoots that are destroyed.

In mid-April they reach maturity to give adults flying around the end of May.
The second generation flies to the adult stage in late June.

Being a very visible damage the monitoring is carried out without the aid of traps and in the case of intervention we proceed to manually harvest the larvae during the night when they escape from the ground to feed.

What is pruning?

Pruning includes a set of operations that are carried out on the plant and which mainly consist in eliminating part of its vegetative system.
It is an essential phase of care and attention to the vines that directly affects the quality of the wine, so we want to share it with you.

Why are vines pruned?

Pruning must be analyzed according to the different essential purposes for which it is carried out:

• push the vine to bear fruit from a young age

• make production as constant as possible, reducing production alternation as much as possible

• improve the quality of the fruit, which can be compromised by excess of quantity

• to give the vine a specific shape and keep it as long as possible over the years

What to consider before pruning vines

Pruning follows very specific physiological principles, which in part are common to pruning fruit plants in general:

• The vigor of the vine is directly proportional to the number of leaves it bears

• The production of flowers is inversely proportional to the vegetative activity of the plant

• The branches have a complementary development to the number of buds, or the smaller the number of buds preserved on the plant, the greater will be the development of each of the branches that will be generated

• The development of the fruits is complementary to that of the branches carried on the plant

• The relationship between root and air development must be such as to ensure a production compatible with the vigor of the plant

• The vertical position of a branch favors the vegetation, the inclined the fruiting

• All natural and / or artificial causes that delay the course of the sap in buds favors fruiting

• The vine carries the bunches on the buds of a year, originating from the branches of the second year.

The various types of vine pruning

Specifically, it is good to remember that the vine does not have wood buds and fruit buds, but mixed buds: each bud of the plant can give rise to bunches, unlike some arboreal plants.

With this premise, we are going to divide the various types of pruning into 3 main classes:

• Short pruning: in which branches are left with a number of buds not exceeding 2

• Long pruning: in which branches are left with a number of gems not less than 5/6

• Mixed pruning: in which there are both a spur with 2 buds, tendentially for the production of wood for the following year, and the branch called “fruit” for the production of the current year.

The pruning of our vines at Neviglie

For our company we follow the traditional mixed pruning with the Guyot training system.
 The Guyot training system consists of three basic cuts:

• Past in which the whole of the branches that have borne fruit in the previous year is eliminated

• Present in which a fruit of 7/8 buds is chosen, which, once folded in a horizontal position, will give rise to the production of the current year

• Future in which a spur is selected, which will then give rise to the future head of fruit for the following year.

At the end, proceed by bending the single selected branch on the vine in a horizontal direction and tying it to the support wire.

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