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| The new vineyard in Sant Sebastià dels Gorgs, Spain. Credit: Gemma Sànchez |
An interesting article in Decanter profiles a vine nursery in Spain that is growing grape varietals grafted onto tall rootstock vines to elevate them high off the ground. It looks to like they form palm-tree-like tall vines. The article also talks about the overhead trellises used in Galicia.
They claim that the roots of any vine top out at 37 cm. This newly planted unique vineyard has trunks at 80cm in height. They claim many benefits including: ‘…better resistance to drought, faster forming of the vines in trellises, keeping fruit away from animals that would eat it, not needing trunk protectors when cleaning up vegetative growth and eliminating excess secondary shoots.’
In earlier experiments, they found that height did indeed make a difference with 90cm vines pushing out maturation by four days over those at 60cm. They also have lower planting density. We've done all this by instinct. How curious!
I would think that taller vines would lead to deeper roots and less need for water, more resilience to drought. As they have just planted the vineyard in 2022, it will be a few years before we see the real results in yield and quality. We'll have to see.
